Uprising- our unacceptable past

Thanks for your post Dinahmo, it was really interesting.

If it wasn't for immigrants we wouldn't have a lot of the foods that we usually enjoy. Chicken tikka masala - apparently the country's favourite dish. Proper ice cream - made by Italians who started ice cream parlours. Italian delicatessens. etc etc.

Which is ridiculous even aside from the racism. Many immigrants help prop up our ailing NHS and brand new immigrants do jobs Brits think are beneath them.

I was on Facebook yesterday on the WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequality) page and was quite shocked, they had posted a notice saying that comments regarding immigrants would not be tolerated.

I hadn't seen the comments, but knew what people may have said from the echoes of my 50's childhood - 'coming over here taking our jobs' etc.

Really interesting Dinahmo. There is nothing like first hand social history to help give life to 'facts'.

Wow Dinahmo thanks for a great post it certainly isn't too long. I love the details about your neighbour and the differences in lifestyle. You were obviously careful to ask why he did some things and find out how those were influenced by where he came from. That's how understanding develops. But what a time to live in Brixton!

We can see by the number of wars over the centuries that people have always hated other ethnic groups or religions. So racism has been around as long as prostitution, the oldest profession. Of course we have come a long way, but maybe it's ingrained in our DNA to some degree, and therefore something that has to be overcome or supressed. Maybe some people have managed that, whist others haven't. And is it possible that open door immigration (which started with Labour) can be making racial matters worse, because many people feel their country has changed beyond recognition and are resentful about that. I'm being devil's advocate here and offering an explanation as to why some people might still have racial tendencies.

I lived in Brixton during the 1981 riots. Our house was in a road which bisected Railton Road. On the day of the riots I had gone to visit my mum and returned to Fenchurch Street to see that the Victoria line was closed at Stockwell which meant I had to find another way to get to Brixton. I got the Northern line to Clapham Common. No buses so I started to walk. I had no idea of the reason. I was supposed to be going directly to some friends who lived in the same road to baby sit. No mobile phones then. Surprisingly my DH came to look for me and found me walking down Acre Lane. At first the police wouldn't let us through the barriers but did so when we explained where we lived. We parked by Brockwell Park and as we walked home we could see the sky lit up by fires, very close to our home. My DH ran and I walked slowly. I didn't want to see. He had already told me that a fire engine had been hi-jacked and driven into the garden of a house on the corner with Railton Road and our road.

We arrived home to find that the fires weren't close to us and so we went out into Railton Road to see what was happening.
There was a mixed group - most of the black people were middle aged. We were all standing behind the police tapes
watching events and passing the time of day. Suddenly some of the houses further towards the centre of Brixton, which were burning fiercely, collapsed. At which point the crowd suddenly divided. The younger black people rushed forward, excited by the conflagration and joined the rioters. The rest of us retreated.

At that time we had no knowledge of civil unrest and had no idea of what would happen. We went home. Filled our bath with water and put blankets and buckets nearby. We moved valuables and documents to the kitchen which was attached to the back of the house. We then waited fearfully to see what would happen next. Not a lot until in the early hours the police broke up the rioters and drove them up our road and the 3 parallel roads. That was scary, they were beating their shields with their truncheons and yelling.

The next day we saw our neighbour outside. Prior to this he had been friendly but he was suspicious of us, testing us to find out what we thought. He lightened up when we said that the police had been behaving badly - SUSS laws flagrantly used to stop black youths etc.

It was quite strange living in a mixed race area. When our neighbours moved in he immediately attacked a honeysuckle that was growing along the fence between our houses and along the front of ours. He used a machete to slice vertically down the fence, cutting all the horizontal
growths. When I asked him why, it transpired that where he came from, things grew so quickly that it was the only way to deal with them. He used to laugh at our back garden because we only grew shrubs and flowers whereas his garden was beaten earth where he grew sweetcorn and kept chickens and rabbits. He blamed our cats for killing these but it was more likely to have been a fox. There were several which lived in the waste ground or came along the railway lines.

After the riots several older bobbies in shirt sleeves were walking the streets. We weren't used to this in Brixton. We were used to cocky young ones who used to stride about with their thumbs under their jacket collar, swaggering. A friend of a friend, who was a policeman, an Earl would you believe, based at Brixton nick, left the force because of the attitude of the police at that time.

Having experienced one riot, we became quite blase. A few weeks later we were driving to Hackney to spend the evening with some friends and ran into a riot near the police station. Not as big. We continued on our way. When the third riot occurred we happened to be Wales, watching the news on tv. Suddenly there was footage of another riot. Luckily ot was nowhere near our house but what could we do but stay in Wales?

Apologies for the length of this but the programme brought the memories flooding back- and I only saw the last 20 minutes

The painting the fence thing sounds like a village I used to live in

I watched part 1 last night, it truly was awful

It all begins at home.probably long before schooling starts.
Inculcated with mother’s milk (So to speak) and the same down the generations, until someone says ENOUGH! with your ignorance. Essentially, racism is perpetrated by insecure inadequate people who have just cause to be be aggrieved at their own poor situations but think themselves so powerless and invisible to society, that instead of complaining to government (hard) they inflict their misplaced bile on groups who are more vulnerable than even themselves - because it is easy or it has been. Racists may actually bond with others of like mind over their shared hatred, they feel a part of something. Others think well “ it’s not happening to me …so therefore it’s not happening”.

Uprising has hopefully been a revelation to some people who were unaware of the degree of racism that existed in those days, and which many politicians were only too happy to reinforce and exploit.

I am glad that there have been several dramatic reconstructions and documentaries that have shone a light on these truly disturbing accounts. Small Axe, also written by Steve McQueen, was also brilliantly done and appeared, in part, to be based on the accounts of people featured in Uprising.

Unfortunately, there are still people who are racist - and politicians who appear to have similar prejudices (Johnson being one) - and there is no room for complacency.

Gagajo. I'm so sorry to hear of your daughter's and grand daughter's treatment. You and I know from experience that these things still happen, though some will deny it.

Blossoming

Gagajo that is appalling, do they think their precious little white children are going to catch colour? I really can’t understand that attitude and yes, I believe it’s a lot more common than people think.

It's at the point now, where if I walk into a park with him, I'm worried if he is the only brown face there. If there is at least ONE other brown family, I feel slightly more reassured. Not that I think any violence is going to occur, but it feels to me as if he's singled out.

I remember the New Cross fire olny too well. It wa on the edge of home territory.

Racism was wide spread I would not deny it, but I at least, was at a school, that treated all alike, in my experience. One of its few saving graces.

I remember the New Cross fire olny too well. It wa on the edge of home territory.

Racism was wide spread I would not deny it, but I at least, was at a school, that treated all alike, in my experience. One of its few saving graces.

Gagajo that is appalling, do they think their precious little white children are going to catch colour? I really can’t understand that attitude and yes, I believe it’s a lot more common than people think.

The only way to stop racism is through education in schools and in the home. It will be a long process. I know that none of my grandchildren are racist as they all have friends who are BAME and would stand up for them if there was racial abuse.

Hopefully over time these occurrences will be less as people mix more in schools, colleges and universities.

I know the atrocities of the past shouldn't be forgotten but we should look to the future and teach our children and grandchildren to be tolerant of everyone.

M0nicaperhaps there were places where racism wasn't the norm but certainly in London then it was. It shocked me how the survivors of the fire were treated by the police, many were children and were questioned for lengthy times. They were never treated as traumaised victims, but cross examined like suspects. The woman officer tallking about it didn't seem particularly concerned about how things were done.

When my DD was a teenager, she had an American magazine for Black women bought for her. One of her white British friends was horrified that there was a magazine just for Black women and said it was racist. DD told her to get out her mags and go through, counting how many Black women were in them.

At the end, the friend looked up and was shocked. She hadn't realised. White people don't see a lot of the racism that is directed at people of colour. If you think it doesn't exist or that it doesn't happen much, ask a Black person. Their perspective will be totally different.

Yes. 'Look, I'm a rampant racist and I'M IN CHARGE.'

I do think that some things have changed. My white 7 year old DGD's best friend is a black girl - so what you might say. But this is in the middle of nowhere in middle England and this black lass is the only one in the the village and in the school. Although she looks so very different from the other children, there have been no racist comments as far as I am aware and my little GD had not given it a second thought. She had not heard of racism until something was said on the radio. She then asked her Mum what this meant and my DD had to find a way of explaining it to her. DGD was shocked and amazed.

And I am in the middle of reading Little House on the prairie to her and was shocked to find so many racist comments about native Indians in North America. I have tried to find a way of reading these bits that does glosses over this a bit, as she is very young and there is time enough to explore what this means. But what shocked me was that I had loved these books as a child and never noticed at all.

Shocking; but it does show that some things have improved a bit.

Apparently he said he didn't know it was offensive. They are treating us like idiots, aren't they?

I see the racist term “yellow peril” was used yesterday in parliament.

What a lot of idiots are contained within those 4 walls.

I suspect if you were able to talk to the Black girls from your school MOnica, they would tell a quite different story.

I'm white. I didn't realise the racism evident where I live until my daughter moved here. Not all racism is overt and in your face. Microaggressions that all seem unimportant on an individual basis are magnified into a bigger problem when they happen all the time, on a daily basis.

I am half Irish, my mother remembered notices in boarding house windows, ' No Irish, no children, no dogs.

I went to a convent grammar school in a big town in the south of England in the 1950s, We had several Trnidadian girls at the school, a Columbian girl, also many Jewish girls. I cannot remember any of them being abused or subject to any kind of discrimination.

That is upsetting to read, GagaJo. It must be a hundred times more so for you, as his grandmother, to see.

I hope your daughter had something to say at the nursery, too.