Short Hot Summer 1981: Southall

The first of a series on the 1981 July uprisings/riots in Britain. Night number one was in Southall:

On Friday 3 July 1981, several 'Oi' punk bands were set to play a gig in Southall, an area of west London with a large South Asian population. The line up at the Hambrough Tavern included the 4-Skins, The Last Resort and The Business. Oi was not a fascist movement as such, and not all its bands and adherents were racist. It was quite distinct from the White Power music scene around bands like Skrewdriver (see: Misunderstood or hateful? Oi!'s rise and fall by Alexis Petridis, Guardian, March 18 2010). But it is true that gigs by such bands did attract skinheads with neo-nazi sympathies, and their presence in an area like Southall was asking for trouble. 

This was after all where Blair Peach had been killed by police in anti-National Front demonstration in 1979, and where in 1976 Gurdip Singh Chagger, a teenager, had been murdered by racists - prompting the formation of the Southall Youth Movement. In July '81, reports of racist incidents involving people heading to the gig in the Hambrough prompted Asian youth to take to the streets. Skinheads were said to have broken shop windows and abused an Asian shopkeeper, among other things. The police formed a cordon around the pub, and deployed riot shields. Clashes intensified as the police attempted to disperse the crowd. Petrol bombs were thrown and the pub was set on fire. Cars and police vehicles were overturned, and a police coach was burnt out. Walls were demolished to provide bricks for ammunition. 61 policemen were injured and at least as many civilians; there were 21 arrests.

Here's a contemporary report from Socialist Worker (11 July 1981), written by Balwinder Singh Rada - a long term Southall activist:

'The invaders of  Southall got more than they bargained for. They began the evening by terrorising some local Asians and ended by fleeing with their tails between their legs, protected by lines of police. The pub in which they had gathered was in flames.

Nazis started arriving in Southall at about 7 pm: 300 of them in four coaches and cars. Sine unfurled a banner in the Southall Broadway and started distributing leaflets advertising a “white nationalist crusade“ demonstration. Then they smashed the shop window and attacked Mr Nirmal Kalhan who was at the till. That led to a rampage through the Broadway smashing Asian shop windows and onto the Hambrough Tavern about 250 yards away.

At this time few Asians were about. Some newspapers have claimed that the Asians “lay in weight“ for the skinheads. Harsev Singh Bains, secretary of the Indian Youth association, said “if we knew they were coming we would not have let them anywhere near Southall“.

But the word spread quickly and the youth started to gather near the pub. By this time the police had also arrived. For an hour and a half people argued with the police that they should arrest the fascists who attacked the people and smashed the shop windows and put the rest of them on coaches and send them away. But the police kept telling the Southall people to go away.

Mohan Singh who saw the shop being attacked said “I said to chief inspector that I can recognise the troublemakers, why don’t you go into the pub with me and arrest them? But he told me to “buy a beer, go home and watch it on the TV“.

When enough reinforcements plus the special patrol group arrived, the police decided to move the Southall people by attacking them with riot shields and truncheons. The fascists poured  out of the pub and from behind the police lines started throwing stones and petrol bombs at the Asians.

The people of Southall fought  back. They pushed the police and the fascists down the road. The whole community joined in the defence. Old men and women were coming out of their homes with stones and bottles in their hands and handing them over to the younger people. The youth, Asians, West Indians and some white, fought bravely against the police and the fascists and the pub was set on fire. Since then there has been a feeling of victory throughout the community.

On Saturday groups of people gathered in the Broadway chatting about how the fascists and the police have been taught a lesson. It was a lesson as well for the racist pubs in the area.

Many people believe that the police knew before about the fascists invasion. That they wanted a riot to help their case in the Scarman enquiry about the Brixton right. On Friday, as usual the police arrested about 25 Asians and only about five fascists. The Anti-Nazi League together with many other organisations are launching a defence campaign for  the arrested'

An item on the same page argues that not all skinheads are racists: ' Skinheads are rapidly becoming identified in the public eye as racist and Nazis. But this is not the case. Plenty of skinheads are not racists. Four weeks ago 500 black and white skinheads  marched together in Sheffield with the slogan ‘job not jails’ demanding an end to police harassment. And last Saturday there were hundreds of skinheads at the Leeds Anti-Nazi League carnival not only enjoying the music but also acting as stewards to protect the carnival from threatened  Nazi attacks'.

The report contrasted newspaper reports of the Southall events with the muted press response to the deaths of four members of the Khan family in a fire in Walthamstow in the same week, believed to have been caused by a racist arson attack.

There's some footage of the riot on youtube in the course of an old documentary about Oi

Some similarities between the Southall events and the riots in Luton a week later, also sparked off by the presence of racist skinheads - see The Luton Riots of 1981 - Brixton comes to Bedfordshire

[post updated July 2021]

Blair Peach, Southall and the Rasta folk devil

I posted last year on the 30th anniversary of the death of Blair Peach, killed during the anti-fascist demonstration in Southall, West London, on 23 April 1979. Papers finally released today by the Metropolitan Police show that they were well aware at the time that he must have been killed by the police Special Patrol Group, but nobody was ever charged.

There's a huge amount of material on the Met's site which I haven't had time to read through yet. One things I was struck by was an internal report to the Home Office written the day after by a Deputy Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard. It gives the police account of the demonstration, which was called to oppose a National Front meeting in this largely Asian area (note that the NF chose St George's Day for its provocation, just as its successor the BNP chose the same day to launch its 2010 election manifesto last week).

The report is clearly an early exercise in putting together a police narrative that justified the violence used in what was to be described as a 'police riot'. For instance, it describes the notorious police assault on the People Unite centre, in which Misty in Roots manager Clarence Baker was put in a coma, as a defensive operation:

'A group of mainly rastafarians, squatting in a house in Park View Road, threw stones and smoke canisters at police. There were a number of police injuries and it was necessary for police to enter the building . There was considerable violence from those in occupation. Truncheons were used and there were injuries to the occupants and police -including two police officers who were stabbed. A variety of missiles were used, including paint which was thrown over police. Curry powder was thrown in policemen's faces'.

Interesting to see that the report invokes that 1970s 'black folk devil' (Gilroy) , the criminal Rastafarian - armed in this case with that most Unenglish of weapons - curry powder! Writing in that period, Paul Gilroy quoted some choice examples of anti-Rasta coverage in the British media. How about:

'Scotland Yard has alerted police forces in England and Wales about the infiltration threat by a West Indian mafia organisation called Rastafarians. It is an international crime ring specialising in drugs, prostitution, extortion, protection, subversion and blackmail... They favour red, high-powered cars, wear their hair in long rats tails under multi-coloured woollen caps and walk about with 'prayer sticks' -trimmed pick axe handles. They are known to police and intelligence organisations on both sides of the Atlantic as being active in organising industrial unrest' (Reading Evening Post, 1976, cited in Gilroy).

The notion of gangsters juggling global drug dealing with organising strikes seems hilarious now, but the consequences of these attitudes in legitimising repression against black youths were serious enough: 'Ideas of black criminality... intersect with racist common sense and, in that process, provide a wealth of justifications for illegitimate, discriminatory and of course illegal police practices at the grassroots level' (Paul Gilroy, Police and Thieves, included in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain, 1982).

Back to that same police report I quoted earlier we can find another example of the barely concealed racism of the period with a statement that 'the violence was mainly from Asian youths, who appeared quite often to lose complete control of their emotions'. Tied up in this is a whole discourse of over emotional foreigners, of Asian males as not quite real men (the main Cass report on Blair's death likewise refers to 'a little Indian man, bleeding').

The police might have got a bit more careful about their language, but pumped up cops from the TSG (successor to the SPG) are still a threat to life and limb as shown by the death last year of Ian Tomlinson.

More on this:


- The-sauce puts police names to some of the blacked out gaps in the documents released today.
- Chris Searle at the IRR remembers Blair Peach, recalling his earlier arrest in 1974 for opposing a racist colour bar at the Railway Tavern in Bow.
- Blue Murder - songs about police killings including Blair Peach, to which I'd like to add another. London Hooligan Soul by the Ballistic Brothers includes the line: 'Blair Peach a crying shame. The NF and unmarked police vans. Who is to blame?'.
- John Eden, an old post on Reggae and the National Front with more about Misty in Roots and Southall.

Flyer for a 1979 benefit gig at Trinity Hall, Bristol for the Southall Defence Fund and People Unite, featuring Revelation Rockers, Stingrays, and The Spics.

Southall 1979

30 years ago today, on the 23 April 1979, the far right National Front were planning an election meeting in Southall, West London. The mainly Asian local population mobilized against this incursion in an area where racist attacks had included the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar three years previously. Workers went on strike and the local community, supported by anti-racists from elsewhere blocked the main road.

The police - in particular the Special Patrol Group (forerunner of today's TSG) - used horses, batons and vans against the crowd and clashes continued into the evening. 350 people were arrested, and many were injured. Most tragically, Blair Peach (pictured)- a socialist teacher from New Zealand - was killed by police.

Reggae band Misty in Roots, who came from the area, were involved in setting up People Unite, a community centre. On the day the building was used as the anti-fascist HQ and it was stormed by police, wrecking the building and beating up those inside. Clarence Baker, the manager of Misty, was so badly injured that he ended up in a coma. Police smashed up a sound system and other equipment.

Jack Dromey from the Transport and General Workers' Union said: 'I have never seen such unrestrained violence against demonstrators ... The Special Patrol Group were just running wild.' No police officers were ever charged for their actions.

Punk band The Ruts were also involved in the People Unite collective and released Jah War, a song about the events on the People Unite record label. The lyrics include the lines: 'Hot heads came in uniform, Thunder and lightning in a violent form... Clarence Baker, No trouble maker, Said the truncheon came down, Knocked him to the ground, Said the blood on the streets that day'.

The Ruts and Misty also played at the 'Southall Kids are Innocent' benefits organised by Rock Against Racism in July 1979 at the Rainbow in London, as did The Clash, The Pop Group, Pete Townshend, Aswad, The Members and The Enchanters.

See also:

Blair Peach, Southall and the Rasta Folk Devil

Dave Renton's account of the events

John Eden on Reggae and the National Front

Blue Murder: songs about police killings (including songs about Blair Peach)