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