Petersen, Helge (2022) Racism, crisis, and confrontation – political struggles over racist violence and

state racism in Britain, 1958-1999. PhD thesis.

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 Racism, Crisis, and Confrontation –
Political Struggles over Racist Violence and State Racism in Britain, 1958-1999

Helge Petersen, M.A. and MRes

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements

of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

School of Social and Political Sciences

College of Social Sciences
University of Glasgow

June 2022

Word Count: 109,599 1

1
Including Table of Contents, Declaration of Originality, Abstract, Acknowledgement, Bibliography.
 Table of Contents
Acknowledgement............................................................................................................6

Declaration of Originality ...............................................................................................6

Abstract ............................................................................................................................7

1. Introduction: Racism, violence, and political conflict in Britain ............................8

1.1 Literature review................................................................................................... 10

1.2 Research questions and objectives ....................................................................... 11

1.3 Structure of the thesis ........................................................................................... 14

2. Theoretical and socio-historical perspectives: Violent racism, social crisis, and

political conflict in post-war, (post-)colonial British history .....................................15

2.1 Theoretical controversies in the area of “race relations” and racism studies ....... 16

2.1.1 From essentialist to constructivist approaches .............................................. 16

2.1.2 From traditional materialist and neo-idealist to critical materialist approaches

................................................................................................................................ 18

2.2 The conditions, manifestations and changing patterns of racism, violence, and

confrontation in post-war, (post-)colonial British history .......................................... 29

2.2.1 (Post-)colonialism, (neo-)fascism and the crisis of nationalist identity ........ 29

2.2.2 Capitalism, class, and the crisis of socio-economic reproduction ................. 36

2.2.3 State power, the public sphere, and the crisis of political legitimacy ........... 43

3. Methodological perspectives: Critical materialist social, political and discourse

analysis............................................................................................................................49

3.1 Research design .................................................................................................... 49

3.1.1 Case analysis ................................................................................................. 50

3.1.2 Context analysis............................................................................................. 51

1
 3.2 Categories of Analysis .......................................................................................... 54

3.2.1 Structural patterns and political relations of forces ....................................... 54

3.2.2 Institutional Processes and Selectivities ........................................................ 57

3.2.3 Discursive Strategies ..................................................................................... 60

3.3 Process of Data Collection and Selection ............................................................. 63

3.3.1 Data Collection .............................................................................................. 63

3.3.2 Data Selection ................................................................................................ 66

3.4 Ethical-Political Remarks ..................................................................................... 69

3.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 70

4. The political conflicts over racist violence between the early 1950s and mid-

1960s................................................................................................................................72

4.1 Context analysis: The political conflicts over racism in the period of imperial

decline and the “post-war settlement” ........................................................................ 72

4.1.1 Hegemonic politics and media discourse ...................................................... 74

4.1.2 Far-right oppositional politics ....................................................................... 80

4.1.3 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional politics ............................ 81

4.2 Case study: The political conflicts over the West London and Nottingham racist

riots and the murder of Kelso Cochrane in Notting Hill, 1958-1959 ......................... 82

4.2.1 The 1958 racist riots and the murder of Kelso Cochrane in the context of

racist violence in the 1950s and 1960s ................................................................... 84

4.2.2 Police investigations and criminal prosecutions............................................ 86

4.2.3 Hegemonic political and media responses..................................................... 88

4.2.4 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist responses ............................................. 94

4.3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 97

2
5. The political conflicts over racist violence between the late 1960s and mid-1970s

.......................................................................................................................................100

5.1 Context analysis: The political conflicts over racism in the context of the dual

crisis of capitalist accumulation and political legitimation in the late 1960s and early

1970s ......................................................................................................................... 100

5.1.1 Hegemonic politics and media discourse .................................................... 102

5.1.2 Far-right oppositional politics ..................................................................... 113

5.1.3 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional politics .......................... 114

5.2 Case study: The political conflicts over the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in

Southall, 1976-1977.................................................................................................. 116

5.2.1 The case of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in the context of racist violence in the late

1960s and 1970s ................................................................................................... 117

5.2.2 Police investigation and criminal prosecution ............................................. 118

5.2.3 Minority and anti-racist responses............................................................... 121

5.2.4 Hegemonic political and media responses................................................... 125

5.3 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 128

6. The political conflicts over racist violence between the late 1970s and late 1980s

.......................................................................................................................................131

6.1 Context Analysis: The political conflicts over racism in the period of Thatcherism

.................................................................................................................................. 132

6.1.1 Hegemonic politics and media discourse .................................................... 133

6.1.2 Far-right oppositional politics ..................................................................... 140

6.1.3 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional politics .......................... 140

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 6.2 Case Study: The political conflicts over the death of fourteen Black teenagers in

Deptford, 1981-1982 ................................................................................................ 142

6.2.1 The New Cross case in the wider context of racist violence in the early to

mid-1980s ............................................................................................................. 144

6.2.2 Minority and anti-racist protest dynamics ................................................... 147

6.2.3 Police investigation and inquest .................................................................. 152

6.2.4 Hegemonic political and media responses................................................... 155

6.3 Interim Conclusion ............................................................................................. 159

6.4 Case study: The political conflicts over the shooting of Cherry Groce and the

death of Cynthia Jarrett during police raids in Brixton and Tottenham, 1985-1987 160

6.4.1 The cases of Cherry Groce and Cynthia Jarrett in the wider context of racist

police violence in the early to mid-1980s............................................................. 161

6.4.2 Minority and anti-racist protest dynamics as well as urban unrest.............. 163

6.4.3 Inquest and criminal trial ............................................................................. 166

6.4.4 Hegemonic political and media responses................................................... 168

6.5 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 176

7. The political conflicts over racist violence in the 1990s .......................................179

7.1 Context Analysis: The political conflicts over racism in the post-Thatcherite

period ........................................................................................................................ 182

7.1.1 Hegemonic politics and media discourse .................................................... 183

7.1.2 Far-right oppositional politics ..................................................................... 193

7.1.3 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional politics .......................... 193

7.2 Case study: The political conflicts over the case of Stephen Lawrence in Eltham,

1993-1999 ................................................................................................................. 195

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 7.2.1 The racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in the wider context of racist

violence in the early 1990s ................................................................................... 196

7.2.2 Police investigation ..................................................................................... 199

7.2.3 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist protest dynamics ............................... 202

7.2.4 Institutional struggles .................................................................................. 206

7.2.5 Hegemonic political and media responses................................................... 215

7.3 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 221

8. Conclusion ................................................................................................................225

Appendix I ....................................................................................................................234

Bibliography .................................................................................................................237

Secondary Literature................................................................................................. 237

Archival Documents ................................................................................................. 261

I. On-Site Archives ............................................................................................... 261

II. Online Archives ............................................................................................... 267

5
Acknowledgement
I am more than grateful to all the people who have supported me over the past years. First
and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisors Satnam Virdee and Sarah Armstrong
for the invaluable support, advice, and feedback they have offered me at every step of my
research project. It has been a truly enlightening intellectual experience. Furthermore, I
would like to highlight that this project would not have been possible without the
permission to carry out research at various archives. I am especially indebted to Anya
Edmond-Pettitt at the Institute of Race Relations, Sarah Garrod at the George Padmore
Institute, Abigail Wharne at the Black Cultural Archives, as well as the staff at the Ahmed
Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre, the Bernie Grant Archive, the Central
Library of Birmingham, the London Metropolitan Archives, the National Archives, as
well as the National Library of Scotland. I would also like to thank the Scottish Graduate
School of Social Sciences as well as the School of Social and Political Sciences at the
University of Glasgow for the privilege of doing research supported by a scholarship.
Furthermore, I would like to thank my family for the invaluable financial and emotional
support they have offered me over the past years. Finally, I would like to dedicate this
thesis to Tanita Jill Pöggel without whose support, affection, and patience I would not
have been able to write this thesis.

Declaration of Originality

“I declare that, except where explicit reference is made to the contribution of others, that
this dissertation is the result of my own work and has not been submitted for any other
degree at the University of Glasgow or any other institution.”

Helge Petersen, 05 June 2022

6
Abstract

This thesis provides a conjunctural analysis of the political struggles over racist violence
and state racism in Britain from the late 1950s to the late 1990s. Based on original archival
research conducted between 2017 and 2020, and drawing on critical materialist
theoretical and methodological perspectives, it combines extensive context analysis with
a series of in-depth case studies that examine various incidents of excessive or deadly
violence against Black and Asian individuals. It focuses not only on racist murders that
have led to accusations of insufficient, biased, and discriminatory police investigations
and criminal prosecutions but also on incidents of deadly police violence that have led to
accusations of racist discrimination and victimisation. More specifically, it explores a
distinct cycle of struggles that had begun in the aftermath of the racist riots in Notting
Hill and Nottingham in 1958 and reached an important yet limited watershed with the
publication of the Macpherson report in 1999. While the existing literature in the area of
racism studies tends to lose sight of these struggles, this thesis offers new insights into
the cases of Kelso Cochrane (1959), Gurdip Singh Chaggar (1976), the New Cross fire
(1981), Dorothy “Cherry” Groce (1985), Cynthia Jarrett (1985), as well as Stephen
Lawrence (1993). At the centre of these case studies lies an examination of the struggles
of the bereaved families as well as minority, anti-racist, and anti-fascist support actors.
The focus on the second half of the 20th century was chosen to demonstrate that these
conflict dynamics can only be fully grasped if they are situated within broader socio-
historical and (geo-)political developments. The thesis places particular emphasis on the
economic crisis of the early 1970s which continued to have a longstanding political
impact in the 1980s and 1990s, the decline of the British Empire since the mid-20th
century, as well as the legitimation crisis of British traditionalism since the late 1960s.
With such a socio-historical perspective, this project makes an innovative contribution to
understanding the trajectories of violent racism, social crisis, and political conflict in
modern British history.

7
1. Introduction: Racism, violence, and political conflict in Britain

At the centre of the issue of racist violence lies a contradictory dynamic. On the one hand,
it is difficult to find any social and political actor who would not openly and strongly
condemn it as morally wrong. There is indeed a small yet dangerous minority of everyday
racists and far-right agitators who passionately incite and perpetrate such acts of violence.
Apart from that, however, injuring or killing civilians is one of the key taboos of formally
democratic nation-states that claim to guarantee basic civil and – to a lesser degree –
human rights. On the other hand, however, racist violence is an undeniable and pervasive
reality in Britain and other Western or European nation-states. Looking at the British
context, it is no exaggeration to state that there is a widespread everyday and political
culture of racist violence which has never been effectively tackled. Despite the problems
of systematic underreporting, more recent government reports and statistics show that
racist hate crimes are a significant problem. According to official police statistics for
England and Wales, for instance, by far the most prevalent type of reported hate crimes
are those categorised as “racially motivated”, accounting on average for more than 70%
between 2015/16 and 2020/21 (Allen/Zayed 2021: 11). Furthermore, there has been a
steady increase in reported incidents from 32,969 in 2012 to 85,268 in 2021 (ibid.: 10).

Community-based and anti-racist organisations have estimated that the extent of

racist violence is even more severe and have also formulated a critique of the role of state
institutions in either actively reproducing or failing to acknowledge the extent of racist
violence. What is more, these organisations have pointed to the long-term history of racist
violence which had been largely ignored, neglected, or downplayed (Athwal et al. 2010;
Athwal/Burnett 2016; Burnett 2013, 2016). 2 The most devastating aspect of this
longstanding history is that numerous people have lost their lives during and following
racist attacks. Based on a systematic analysis of media coverage, Harmit Athwal and Jon
Burnett, researchers at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), estimate that since the
publication of the Macpherson Report in 1999 there have been at least 93 deaths ‘with a
known or suspected racial element’ (Athwal/Burnett 2016: 2). They found that, although
there was some form of conviction in 84% of these cases (not always manslaughter or
murder), it was only in one quarter of these cases that a ‘racial motivation’ was ‘factored
into the sentencing of the perpetrator(s)’ (ibid.: 2). Equally worrying is the occupational
culture of racist discrimination and victimisation in the British law enforcement and

2
The official documentation of “racial attacks” only began in the early 1980s (Home Office 1981).

8
criminal justice system. Based on a critical review of official statistics and surveys as well
as academic research, Bowling and Phillips (2007) show that Black people in England
and Wales are significantly more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than
white people. While it took past British governments decades to acknowledge the
problem of racist victimisation, there are now various reports that at least partly document
its extent (Ministry of Justice 2015; Lammy 2017). In an extensive report on racial and
ethnic disproportionalities within the criminal justice system of England and Wales, for
instance, the Ministry of Justice concludes that ‘Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic
(BAME) groups are over-represented at most stages throughout the CJS, compared with
the White ethnic group […]’ (Ministry of Justice 2015: 7).

Similar disproportionalities have also been found with regard to deaths in state
custody. Since the late 1990s, both official and independent reports have found that a
disproportionally high degree of persons from racialised minority communities have died
in circumstances where the use of police force was a contributing factor (see for example
INQUEST 2021a; IPCC 2011; Leigh et al. 1998). A recent review of deaths in police
custody by Dame Elish Angiolini summarises that ‘a disproportionate number of people
from BAME communities […] have died following the use of force’ (Angiolini 2017: 90)
which ‘resonate[s] with the Black community’s experience of systemic racism, and
reflect[s] wider concerns about discriminatory over-policing, stop and search, and
criminalisation’ (ibid.: 84). Against this background, the report criticises the failure of the
British criminal justice system to sufficiently investigate and prosecute such cases and
recommends that deaths in police custody should be investigated with the same effort,
timescale and resources as civilian homicide cases (ibid.: 173). Based on extensive media
analysis, Athwal and Bourne (2015) estimate that at least 509 persons from racialised
minority communities, refugees or migrants died in state custody between 1991 and 2014,
whereby 68% of those cases occurred in prison, 27% in police custody, and 5% in
immigration detention. They conclude that ‘[a] large proportion of these deaths have
involved undue force and many more a culpable lack of care’ (ibid.: 2). Due to a lack of
reliable sources, it is much more difficult to estimate the number of deaths in state custody
in the period prior to the 1990s. In the first report ever published on that issue, IRR
researchers documented at least 75 cases in which Black people died in state custody
between 1969 and 1991 (IRR 1991). As will be discussed in greater detail throughout this
thesis, many of those cases have triggered allegations of and protests against prejudiced

9
police investigations, judicial proceedings and media discussions, and were connected to
the wider issues of everyday, organised and institutional racism in Britain.

1.1 Literature review

These empirical observations not only point to the severity of the problem but also raise
many questions about the social and political causes which make the reproduction of such
an endemic culture of racist violence and victimisation possible – particularly considering
the routinised condemnation of racist violence within official and hegemonic public
discourse. It could be expected that academic research is particularly well-suited to shed
light on these underlying conditions. However, British academia has not been an
exception to the longstanding tradition of ignoring or downplaying the problem of racist
discrimination and victimisation. According to Bowling and Phillips, the academic
contributions to the analysis of racist violence had been minimal for most parts of British
post-war history – a situation that only gradually changed during the 1980s and 1990s
(Bowling/Phillips 2002: xv-xvii). Nonetheless, academic research has continued to be
characterised by a lack of engagement with the issue of (violent) racism. While some
high-profile cases – in particular the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in April 1993
and the police killing of Mark Duggan in August 2011 – have attracted scholarly attention,
the underlying patterns and trajectories of racist violence have been barely explored in a
more systematic fashion. What is more, this has also led to insufficient accounts of such
“high profile” cases. As will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 8, the academic
discussion about the Stephen Lawrence case is characterised by simplistic interpretative
and explanatory frameworks as well as a lack of engagement with the broader socio-
historical context within which the case had occurred.

In light of this lack of mainstream academic attention, the main impulses for the
critical study of racist violence in contemporary Britain have come from two other
directions. First, non-academic organisations that have undertaken pioneering research as
well as monitoring and documenting work over the past decades (Athwal/Bourne/Wood
2010; Athwal/Bourne 2015; Athwal/Burnett 2016; Bethnal Green and Stepney Trades
Council 1978; Hunte 1965; IRR 1979, 1987, 1991; Ward 1986). Second, the academic
sub-field of critical racism studies which has made seminal contributions since the late
1970s and 1980s (CCCS 1982; Hall et al. 2013; Miles 1984; Sivanandan 2008; Solomos
1988), and has played a key role in raising wider attention to the issue since the 1990s
10
(Akram 2014; Balbus/Kantorová 2021; Bland 2019; Bowling 1998; Bowling/Phillips
2002; Björgo/Witte 1993; Chahal/Julienne 1999; Erfani-Ghettani 2014; Haydn 1997;
Hesse et al. 1992; Keith 1993; Panayi 1996; Pemberton 2008; Rowe 1998; Virdee 1995;
Witte 1995). 3 However, this body of literature, too, is still characterised by various
limitations. It is particularly striking that the longstanding history of political conflicts
over – and political resistance against – incidents and patterns of racist violence and state
racism in contemporary British has not been examined in a systematic fashion. In the
above-mentioned studies on racist violence, but also broader studies on the history of
racism, anti-racism and minority politics (Fryer 2010; Olusoga 2016; Shukra 1998;
Solomos 2003; Virdee 2014), there is a tendency to lose sight of the catalytic role which
struggles over racist violence have played in the broader history of (anti-)racism in
contemporary Britain. A positive development of the past few years has been a growing
number of studies that explore the politicisation of both historical and contemporary cases
of racist violence (Ambikaipaker 2018; Andrews 2021; Akhtar 2020; Ashe et al. 2016;
Bunce/Field 2015; Elliot-Cooper 2017; Erfani-Ghettani 2015; Jackson 2015; Peplow
2019; Pierre 2019; Ramamurthy 2013; West 2019). What is still missing, however, is a
more systematic analysis that puts individual cases in a wider socio-historical
constellation. Furthermore, many of the just mentioned case-based studies tend to limit
their scope of analysis to either activist, official or media responses to incidents of deadly
violence, without offering a more comprehensive picture of the conflicts in question. In
many cases, then, there is a lack of holistic perspectives that engage with the interplay of
different collective and institutional actors that have been involved in the respective
public discussions and political struggles. 4

1.2 Research questions and objectives

It is the study of this insufficiently researched topic of the historical emergence and
transformation of violent racism as a contentious political issue in contemporary Britain
to which this research project seeks to contribute. More specifically, it is informed by the
following two hypotheses: first, that the politics of (anti-)racism in Britain cannot be
sufficiently grasped without a systematic engagement with the specific struggles that have

3
The sub-field of critical racism studies has also played an important role in offering explanations and
interpretations regarding the Stephen Lawrence case. I will critically engage with this discussion in chapter
6.
4
I will come back to case-specific literature reviews at the beginning of each empirical chapter.

11
emerged in response to its violent and deadly manifestations; and second, that these
conflict dynamics cannot be sufficiently grasped without situating them within the wider
socio-historical constellation within which they have emerged. To shed light on his
constellation, I carried out a case-based, comparative analysis of the political and juridical
struggles over racist violence in the British post-war, (post-)colonial period from the late
1950s to the late 1990s. Based on original archival research conducted between late 2017
and late 2021, I developed a research design that combines extensive contextual analysis
with an in-depth analysis of various cases of deadly violence. I put a particular emphasis
on two types of deadly violence which have provoked accusations of and protests against
racism within the British law enforcement and criminal justice system, and British society
more generally: racist murder cases that were investigated and prosecuted in an
insufficient, biased and discriminatory manner; and cases of deaths in state custody which
have raised accusations of racist victimisation. While the history of racist violence in
Britain is much more extensive, I decided for pragmatic reasons to restrict my analysis to
the cycle of political conflict that began with the racist riots in Notting Hill and
Nottingham in 1958 and reached an important yet limited watershed in the late 1990s
with the publication of the Macpherson report. More precisely, I chose the cases of Kelso
Cochrane (May 1959), Gurdip Singh Chaggar (June 1976), the fourteen victims of the
New Cross fire (January 1981), Cherry Groce (September 1985), Cynthia Jarrett (October
1985), and Stephen Lawrence (April 1993). 5 Drawing on a distinct strand of critical
materialist analysis of discourse and ideology, domination and violence, contention and
opposition, I explored the catalytic role which these confrontational episodes have played
in the overall transformation of the politics of racism and anti-racism in Britain. Thus, my
focus on case analysis was not only a pragmatic decision, but also an attempt to take into
account and do justice to actually existing struggles with a considerable social and
political impact. 6 Such an impact-oriented selection process has led me to foreground
these cases at the expense of many other cases which have barely received any wider
public attention. Furthermore, it has led me to prioritise the experiences of Afro-
Caribbean and, to a lesser degree, South Asian communities resident in the London
metropolitan area. Trying to mitigate these limitations, each case study will be

5
A detailed rationale of case selection will be provided in chapter 3 and Appendix I.
6
In this sense, my own approach differs from postmodern approaches that are less interested in questions
of historical reconstruction and periodisation and put a stronger emphasis on what Saidiya V. Hartman calls
the practices of ‘foraging and disfiguration – raiding for fragments upon which other narratives can be spun
and misshaping and deforming the testimony through selective quotation and the amplification of issues
germane to this study.’ (Hartman 1997: 12)

12
accompanied by a contextual analysis that situates the selected cases within the wider
every day and political culture of racist violence from which it emerged. This will also
include a discussion of a much larger number of individual cases. Such a dual approach
allows me to shed light on the complex relation between “high profile” and “low profile”
cases, between excessive and everyday violence, between the spectacular moment and
the longstanding campaign, between exceptional “watersheds” and the plethora of
campaigns and struggles whose calls for justice have failed to break through the racist
selectivities of British mainstream politics and discourse. As will be explored in this
thesis, the conditions and manifestations of both types of violence are indeed different.
Strictly detaching both types of violence from each other, however, is avoided in this
thesis as there is a risk of reproducing a certain double standard regarding the problem of
state racism and police violence. In agreement with Angiolini (2017: 173), then, this
thesis seeks to argue that such an exceptionalism needs to be overcome in order to tackle
the root causes of the disproportionate victimisation of racialised minorities by police and
criminal justice agencies. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that the problem of state
racism has been an overarching topic, including those cases where the perpetrators were
non-state actors. Finally, I will show that the long-term (dis-)continuities of these conflict
dynamic can only be properly grasped if they are situated within broader socio-historical
developments in Britain and beyond. Three overlapping processes will figure prominently
in this context: the economic crisis of the early 1970s which continued to have a
longstanding political impact in the 1980s and 1990s; the decline of the British Empire
since the mid-20th century; and the legitimation crisis of British traditionalism in the post-
1968 period. Overall, I have engaged with the following set of research questions:

• Which catalytic role have the juridical-political struggles in the aftermath of various
killings of individuals from racialised minority communities, perpetrated by either non-
state or state actors, played in the wider transformation of the politics of (anti-)racism in
the British post-war, postcolonial history?

• Which specific role have media discourses, public demonstrations, judicial proceedings,
official inquiries, parliamentary debates played as the institutionalised terrains on which
those conflicts were fought out? To what degree have the concerns and demands of
minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional actors been acknowledged on the
mainstream political stage?

13
 • To what extent and in which ways has the culture of racist violence been related to and
changed in the context of the decline of the British empire as well as the political and
economic crisis of the “post-war settlement” in the second half of the 20th century?

1.3 Structure of the thesis

To answer these questions, I will first develop a theoretical and methodological

framework that allows for the examination of the changing patterns of racism, violence,
and opposition in contemporary Britain in a systematic manner. In the second chapter, I
will begin with general reflections upon various conceptual and explanatory problems
that need to be addressed and resolved in order to move in the direction of a more concrete
empirical research design. More specifically, I will organise the contemporary field of
critical racism studies in terms of various overarching paradigms and will make a case
for a critical materialist approach that is attentive to the socio-historical embeddedness of
the politics of (anti-)racism. Against this background, I will elaborate on the various
broader constellations within which my empirical analysis will be situated: the legacies
of colonialism and imperialism, fascism and Nazism; the changing patterns of capitalist
socialisation; and the changing patterns of state power, organised politics and public
discourse in the second half of the 20th century. In the third chapter, I will draw on
methodological discussions in the area of historical sociology, critical discourse analysis,
as well as relational and conjunctural Marxism in order to develop an analytical
framework that allows to carry out such a multi-layered empirical analysis. Furthermore,
I will discuss the methodological and ethical limitations and challenges that have arisen
in the context of my research project. From here, chapters 4-7 will present the empirical
analysis, organised into key periods. In chapter 4, I will re-examine the political
significance of the racist riots in West London and Nottingham in 1958 as well as the
murder of Kelso Cochrane in Notting Hill in May 1959. In this context, I will demonstrate
that the conventional periodisation encapsulated in the “post-war settlement thesis” needs
to be qualified in order to fully grasp the emerging political conflicts around racism and
violence in the 1950s and early 1960s. One way in which this will be illustrated is by
looking at the emergence of an embryonic crisis discourse about “slums” and “race
conflicts”. In chapter 5, I will retrace the changes that have occurred between the late
1960s and late 1970s by focusing on the political conflicts in the aftermath of the murder
of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in Southall in June 1976. In contrast to the existing body of

14
literature which tends to either disregard or isolate this case, I will show that it had become
a key moment in the broader conflicts over racism in the context of multiple crisis
tendencies since the late 1960s and early 1970s. In chapter 6, which will be the most
extensive one, I will analyse the political conflicts over racist violence in a moment of
intensifying crisis tendencies and right-wing populist dominance throughout the 1980s.
At the centre of this chapter will be the analysis of three cases which had a considerable
impact on the political debates and conflicts over racism: the death of fourteen Black
teenagers during and following a fire at a private house party in Deptford, London, in
January 1981; the police shooting of Cherry Groce during a police raid at her home in
Brixton in September 1985; and the death of Cynthia Jarrett during a police raid at her
home in Tottenham in October 1985. In chapter 7, I will re-examine the political conflicts
over the Stephen Lawrence case in light of the contradictory developments by which the
transition period from Thatcherism to New Labour was characterised. Echoing these
broader political developments, the Lawrence case became an exceptional moment of
institutional reform which nonetheless was characterised by crucial limitations and
selectivities. In contrast to the existing body of literature which tends to lose sight of these
ambivalences, I will offer an analysis that puts a stronger emphasis on the complexity of
political struggles and public debates in the aftermath of the murder of Lawrence. More
specifically, I will argue that these struggles can only be fully grasped if they are
examined in light of the previous cycle of protests and conflicts, in particular the shifts
that had taken place in the 1980s. This analysis will also change the understanding of the
Stephen Lawrence Inquiry which, below the surface of its official findings and
recommendations, became a remarkable focal point of political intervention from the
entire field of minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist organisations that had emerged over
the previous four decades. That many of these interventions were either ignored or
dismissed in the final report provides new insights into the institutional selectivities by
which the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry was characterised.

2. Theoretical and socio-historical perspectives: Violent racism, social crisis, and

political conflict in post-war, (post-)colonial British history

This chapter sets out to develop a theoretical framework on the socio-historical origins
and political-ideological manifestations of contemporary British racism, based on a
critical engagement with key theoretical debates in the area of “race relations” and racism

15
studies as well as social and political research more generally. In a first step, I will
critically engage with various theoretical paradigms that figure prominently in the area of
“race relations” and racism studies. More specifically, I suggest organising the recent
history of “race relations” and racism studies in terms of a distinction between essentialist
and constructivist perspectives (1.1), as well as between orthodox materialist, neo-
idealist, and critical materialist perspectives (1.2). Drawing on constructivist and critical
materialist perspectives, I will then develop a theoretical framework that puts the politics
of (anti-)racism in Britain in the context of the legacies of colonialism and imperialism,
fascism, and Nazism (2.1), as well as in the context of changing patterns of capitalist
socialisation (2.2), state power, organised politics and public discourse (2.3) in the second
half of the 20th century. One overarching aspect that will be discussed in each of these
sections is the role of crisis tendencies and discourses in the (re-)articulation of racist
ideology and oppression, but also in the formation of political opposition.

2.1 Theoretical controversies in the area of “race relations” and racism studies

Within the confines of this chapter, it is impossible to develop a comprehensive overview

of the complexity of ‘race relations’ and racism studies both within the British academic
landscape and beyond. In the following, I will restrict myself to discussing two
overarching paradigm shifts which I argue have shaped the wider field over the past
decades.

2.1.1 From essentialist to constructivist approaches

The first paradigm shift relates to the ontological and epistemological status of the
concept of “race”. There is a long tradition of essentialist usages of the concept of “race”
in modern scientific and academic thought. While the tradition of European
enlightenment and modern science has emerged from the project of overcoming
essentialist, mythical notions of power and domination in the pre-modern age, it has made
significant contributions to the justification and dissemination of racist myths as part of
the ongoing and intensifying colonisation of the non-European world (Bhambra 2007:
34-55; Buck-Morss 2009: 21-40; Eze 1997; Miles/Brown 2003: 39-50). But the legacy of
essentialist notions of “race” goes beyond the explicit justification of racism. According
to Colette Guillaumin and Robert Miles, the early 20th century has also seen the

16
emergence of a distinct strand of academic research that claims to critically analyse
racism but nonetheless operates in an uncritical manner with the category of “race” itself.
This ‘“race relations” paradigm’ (Miles 1993: 2) is based on the assumption that there is
an actually existing distinction and tension between different “races” of human beings
which are primarily distinguishable through references to skin colour and other
phenotypical differences. Such an approach, which Miles traces back to the works of
Robert Park in the US context as well as John Rex and Michael Banton in the UK context,
understands “racial difference” or “conflict” as an objectively existing phenomenon to
which social actors in some way or another respond, and which therefore is supposed to
explain social and political dynamics (Miles 1993: 30-39). The ironic result of this
paradigm, which in its reformist variant has indeed been dedicated to the amelioration of
so-called “racial disadvantage”, is that it nonetheless tends to reproduce the key
assumption of racist ideology: that “race” is an undeniable and unsurmountable fact of
human existence. What is largely ignored, however, is the entirely fictitious character of
“race” and the imaginary work required to perceive social relations as “race relations” in
the first place (Guillaumin 1980: 39)

In the wake of the “constructivist turn” in academic debates as well as the growing
influence of critical engagements with the pitfalls and complicities of the “race relations”
paradigm, the last third of the 20th century has seen the growing influence of scholarly
approaches that turn the spotlight on the concept of “race” itself. 7 Instead of taking “race”
for granted as an ‘explanans’ (Miles 1993: 2, emphasis in original), these approaches seek
to explain the emergence of the belief in “races” in the first place. The underlying
assumption is that “race” does not exist as an empirical reality but only as the result of a
symbolic construction process. As Miles puts it, ‘[t]here are no “races” and therefore no
“race relations”.’ (Miles 1993: 42; see also Phizacklea/Miles 1980: 2) Against this
background, Miles suggests moving in the direction of a ‘racism paradigm’ (ibid.: 2)
which primarily focuses on analysing how racism emerges and flourishes as a widespread
belief system. According to Miles, racism can be defined as ‘an ideology which signifies
some real or alleged biological characteristics as a criterion of other group membership
and which also attributes that group with other, negatively evaluated characteristics.‘
(Miles 1993: 60) 8 Furthermore, the significance of analysing “race” as an ideological

7
For an outline of the different intellectual currents that have contributed to this endeavour, see Solomos
(2003: 24-29).
8
The concept of ideology will be discussed in section 2.1.2.

17
construction process has been encapsulated in the concept of “racialisation” which was
first used by Frantz Fanon (2004: 150, 152). According to Miles, the concept of
racialisation refers to ‘a process of delineation of group boundaries and of allocation of
persons within those boundaries by primary reference to (supposedly) inherent and/or
biological (usually phenotypical) characteristics’ (Miles 1982: 157, as cited in
Miles/Brown 2003: 100). The key distinction between the concepts of racism and
racialisation is that the former entails the moment of “negative evaluation”, whereas the
latter refers to a broader set of discursive and ideological practices that operate with
racialised categories.

2.1.2 From traditional materialist and neo-idealist to critical materialist

approaches

Constructivist approaches have offered valuable starting points for the development of
my overall research project. In this section, however, I seek to argue that the constructivist
impulse alone is not sufficient. For the insight into the constructed character of “race”
does not tell us much about its conditions of existence. What is therefore required is an
additional elaboration on the specific socio-historical and political-ideological
circumstances under which racist beliefs and practices emerge. While the constructivist
turn has received wide acceptance among contemporary scholars of “race”, racialisation,
and racism, it is these questions of explanation and contextualisation which, as I will
show, are still largely contested. I therefore consider this section a particularly important
contribution to contemporary theoretical debates in the area of racism studies.

There is a long tradition of – largely but not exclusively – Marxist thought that
represents what I would like to call a traditional materialist perspective that operates with
a determinist and reductionist framework. The notion of materialism goes back to the
early writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels who in contrast to the tradition of
German idealism and other forms of bourgeois philosophy put material living conditions
and social practices at the centre of their understanding of society and history
(Marx/Engels 1976a; 1976b). This led them to formulate a one-directional and
monocausal model of the relationship between “existence” and “consciousness”,
“structure” and “superstructure”. As Marx put it,

18
 [t]he totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of
society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and
to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. […] It is not the
consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that
determines their consciousness. (Marx 1987: 263)

Although Marx used this model only in his earlier writings and moved to more complex
frameworks in his later writings, 9 it has become one of the most influential reference
points in subsequent Marxist thought, including Marxist scholars of racism. The main
problem of that model is its tendency to reduce the complexity of social relations to
relations of production, and the complexity of social consciousness to class
consciousness. More precisely, two types of reductionism can be distinguished. A strong
reductionism simply denies the existence of categories of identity that do not immediately
express socio-economic relations. Here again, Marx’ and Engels’ earlier writings are a
case in point. In the “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, for instance, they claim that in
the wake of the generalisation of capitalist class relations ‘[d]ifferences of age and sex
have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class’ (Marx/Engels 1976b:
491) and ‘[n]ational differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more
vanishing’ (ibid.: 503). A weak reductionism acknowledges the complexity of social
domination but claims that class domination always plays a determining role. An
influential example is Nicos Poulantzas whose work on state power encompasses a wide
range of phenomena including nationalism and fascism, but nonetheless prioritises class
as the primary unit of analysis (Poulantzas 2014: 93-120; 2018). In his study on German
Nazism and European fascism, for instance, he strongly underestimates the constitutive
role of racism and antisemitism: Within his 360-page strong study, there are only a few
short paragraphs where these ideologies are mentioned at all (Poulantzas 2018: 255, 267,
281, 343). Against this background, it is unsurprising that he barely mentions the Nazi
programme of persecution and extermination (ibid.: 343-44). 10 What both types of
reductionism have in common is a simplistic explanatory framework that tends to reduce
the complexity of social relations of domination to the repressive and ideological power
of ruling classes and elite forces. Against this background, racism tends to be trivialised
as an instrument of manipulation deployed by these ruling classes and elite forces in order
to weaken working-class solidarity and resistance. While the analysis of elite racism is an

9
See the section on critical materialism further below.
10
As I will argue further below, Poulantzas nonetheless made valuable contributions to the development of
relational perspectives on state power and political struggles.

19
important endeavour, such an explanatory framework not only runs the risk of promoting
a conspiratorial notion of power and domination, but also tends to ignore or downplay the
problem of working-class racism (Robinson 2000: 29-43; Virdee 2014).

While the left-wing critique of orthodox Marxism was until the mid-20th century
confined to a small number of dissident thinkers, it gained momentum in the following
decades, particularly in response to the emergence of new social and political movements
in the wake of the ‘the world revolution of 1968’ (Wallerstein 2004: 16). It was especially
the emerging paradigms of post-Marxism, post-structuralism and postmodernism that
have created invaluable impulses for challenging what Stuart Hall calls ‘the necessitarian
and reductionist logic which has dogged the classical Marxist theory of ideology’ (2019:
235). What unites these different contributions is the attempt to highlight the specificity
and autonomy of politics, culture, language, knowledge, discourse and other
“superstructural” levels. At the same time, however, their ontological and epistemological
alternatives have been accused of simply inverting the problem rather than moving in the
direction of a more complex, dialectical model of social relations and their ideational
expressions. According to Ambavalaner Sivanandan, for instance, who in the late 1980s
and early 1990s had a dispute with Stuart Hall and other figures of the so-called “New
Times” project (Hall/Jacques 1989), these approaches represent nothing more than a ‘shift
in focus from economic determinism to cultural determinism’ (Sivanandan 2008: 46).
Here again, a strong and weak variant can be distinguished. 11 A strong variant assumes
that the social world is exclusively constituted by discursive practices, and therefore
rejects the idea of an extra-discursive objective world with a distinct impact on these
practices. The most influential example is Laclau and Mouffe’s post-Marxist approach
which starts from the premise that, as Laclau puts it, discourse represents the ‘primary
terrain of the constitution of objectivity as such’ (Laclau 2005: 68; see also:
Laclau/Mouffe 2001). A weak variant acknowledges the existence of non-discursive
aspects of social reality but underestimates their determining power. For instance,
Foucault maintains a distinction between ‘discursive’ and ‘non-discursive practices’
(Foucault 2002: 75-77) but tends to restrict his own archaeological and genealogical
studies to the former. In his programmatic lecture on the ‘order of discourse’, for instance,
Foucault provides valuable insights into what he calls the ‘materiality’ (Foucault 1981:
52) of discourse but stops short of analysing the wider societal and historical

11
For the conceptual distinction between a weak and strong discursive reductionism, see also Carter/Virdee
(2008: 671-72).

20
constellations within which discursive orders emerge (and to which they relate). Such a
weak reductionism can also be found in the later work of Stuart Hall who stresses the
need for an analysis of socio-economic relations but suggests re-imagining them as
linguistic constructs. Assuming that ‘the social works like a language’ (Hall 2019: 240,
emphasis in original), Hall thus tends to subsume the former under the latter by way of
analogisation. Although these approaches differ from classic idealism insofar as they
highlight the power relations inscribed in discursive formations, they reproduce its
tendency to ‘merely give a history of ideas, separated from the facts and the practical
development underlying them’ (Marx/Engels 1976a: 57). Regarding the task of critically
analysing ideologies such as racism such a neo-idealist approach leads to significant
problems. Most notably, it runs the risk of mystifying discourses and ideologies as entities
that do not have a cause beyond the fact of their own existence. One ironic result is that
some neo-idealist approaches, in the absence of explanatory frameworks that go beyond
the immediacy of discourse, tend to re-essentialise their objects of inquiry. One example
is the work of David Theo Goldberg. In his influential work “The Racial State”, for
instance, Goldberg indeed starts from a constructivist notion “race” as ‘the social and
cultural significance assigned to or assumed in physical or biological markers of human
beings’ (Goldberg 2002: 118). His underlying explanatory approach, however, remains
highly unspecific and ahistorical. The social and political prevalence of racialised notions
of superiority and homogeneity is primarily understood as a response to what is called
‘racial heterogeneity’ (ibid.: 14), the ‘intermixing of peoples and interfacing of cultures’
(ibid.: 15), or ‘racially characterised diversification’ (ibid.: 18). More specifically,
Goldberg argues that ‘in modernity what is invested with racial meaning, what becomes
increasingly racially conceived, is the threat, the external, the unknown, the outside."
(ibid.: 23) However, what is not explored is why “heterogeneity” gains social and political
significance and is perceived as a threat in the first place, that is, what kind of social and
political conditions favour such ideological constructions. 12 In the absence of such a
reflection, the tension between “homogeneity” and “heterogeneity” is taken for granted
as a self-evident ontological condition. Similar to the essentialist “race relations”
paradigm, then, Goldberg falsely assumes that ‘de facto heterogeneity among and
between population groups’ (ibid.: 28) is the main cause of the proliferation of racialised

12
Goldberg rightly points to the significance of the colonial legacy as the most important contextual and
explanatory factor, but his definition of colonialism as a project of ‘managing heterogeneity, dealing with
difference’ (ibid.: 31) does not go beyond these unspecific remarks.

21
discourse (rather than regarding notions of “heterogeneity” and “homogeneity” as the
result of ideological construction processes). 13

The limitations of both traditional materialism and neo-idealism continue to shape

contemporary academic and political debates, oftentimes even provoking and reinforcing
each other. The current debate on the rise of the populist and far right is a striking case in
point. As I and my colleagues Hannah Hecker and Alexander Struwe argue elsewhere,
there is a strong tendency within this debate to bifurcate exactly in those two directions
(Petersen/Hecker 2022; Petersen/Struwe forthcoming). In light of the prevalence of either
traditional materialist or neo-idealist explanatory approaches, then, the task of developing
a more sophisticated approach is still pressing. In the following, I will engage with various
authors who have made useful contributions to overcoming these problems by moving in
the direction of what I would like to call a critical materialist approach. Such a paradigm
shift can already be identified in the work of Marx himself who in light of the failures of
proletarian revolutions in mid-19th century Europe turned his attention to authoritarian
projects such as Bonapartism in France. 14 Apart from these fragmentary reflections,
however, Marx’ later writings provided only limited impulses for the development of a
critical theory of anti-emancipatory ideologies such as nationalism, racism, antisemitism,
or sexism. 15 It was only in the following decades that a number of dissident Marxist
thinkers, many of whom directly affected by racist and antisemitic persecution, developed
new impulses for the materialist analysis of what Herbert Marcuse calls the ‘destructive
forces’ (Marcuse 1974: 54) of modern civilisation, manifesting themselves throughout
the 19th and 20th centuries in the form of persisting authoritarian, traditionalist and
patriarchal tendencies, the brutality of mass poverty, intensified colonial and imperial
regimes, the triumph of European fascism and German Nazism, but also the continued
threat of nationalism, racism and antisemitism in the postcolonial and post-fascist present.
While the legacy of such intellectual perspectives is diverse and complex, there are
several “classic” approaches that have played an especially important role as sources of
inspiration for my own research. These include the early Institute of Social Research
(Adorno 1978, 2017; Horkheimer 1993a, 1993b, 2002; Horkheimer/Adorno 2002;
Löwenthal/Guterman 1950; Marcuse 1969; 1974; 1991), the early Centre for

13
For a critique of these ahistorical and reifying tendencies in Goldberg’s work, see Carter/Virdee (2008:
670-74).
14
For an examination of The 18th Brumaire as a shifting moment in Marx‘ overall work, see Jessop (2002).
15
For a critical reflection upon Marx‘ and Engel’s ambivalent relation to nationalism, see Robinson (2000:
52-61).

22
Contemporary Cultural Studies (Hall et al. 2013; CCCS 1982), as well as various
materialist contributions to Black radicalism, anti-colonial and/or feminist thought (Bryan
et al. 2018; Fanon 2004, 2008; Federici 1975; 2004; Robinson 2000; Sivanandan 2008). 16
In spite of their class reductionist tendencies, there are also various Western-Marxist
contributions to relational and institutional analysis which I considered useful (Gramsci
1971; Jessop 1990, 2016; Offe 1974; Poulantzas 2014). By framing these approaches as
critical materialist, I do not claim that they represent a homogeneous tradition of thought,
nor that it is unnecessary to critically engage with them as well. There are indeed various
differences and limitations that need to be addressed when engaging with these authors
and bringing them into conversation. 17 Overall, however, my argument is that all these
authors offer valuable contributions to overcome the limitations of both traditional
materialism and neo-idealism. In the following, I would like to highlight four aspects
which I consider relevant in this regard.

First, what distinguishes critical from traditional materialist approaches is that they
operate with a more complex notion of materiality. While the latter tend to restrict the
notion of “material living conditions” to the experiences resulting from the institutional
setting of the capitalist factory in the global north, the former extend it in at least three
directions. First, through an engagement with the global entanglements of domination,
coercion, exploitation, and violence, such as in light of the legacy of European
colonialism and imperialism. Such a perspective is especially strong in the work of
materialist thinkers inspired by Black radical or anti-colonial thought (Bryan et al. 2018;
Fanon 2004; Robinson 2000; Sivanandan 2008), but can also be found in others works,
such as those by Marcuse (1969; 1972) or Federici (1995; 2004). Second, through a more
complex notion of everyday and social reproduction. For instance, there is a distinct
strand of feminist materialist thought that critiques the orthodox Marxist prioritisation of
the lived experience of the male wage labourer, but also avoids the post-Marxist retreat

16
These pathbreaking contributions have also influenced a number of more contemporary authors which I
will not explicitly list here but bring in throughout the remainder of this chapter as well as the thesis at
large.
17
The critical theory of the early ISR and CCCS, for instance, has been characterised by a different focus
in the engagement with the horrors of the modern era. While the former primarily focused on the legacy of
fascism, Nazism and the wider political culture of antisemitism, the latter primarily focused on the legacy
of European colonialism and racism. This is not to say, however, that these differences were absolute. For,
as a closer look at key contributions demonstrates, there was at least an attentiveness to the multiplicity of
catastrophes of the modern era (see for example Horkheimer/Adorno 2002: xi-xii; 1-34; Marcuse 1969;
Gilroy 1993: 205-12). Bringing together both research traditions turned out to be a valuable endeavour
during my research process in order to take into consideration these multiple sources of political
persecution, oppression and violence.

23
from questions of material living and working conditions. For instance, Dorothy E. Smith
(1977, 2005) and Silvia Federici (1975, 2004) engage with the significance of the
household as a space of unwaged labour and patriarchal power, but also as a terrain of
everyday political struggles. 18 Other authors, such as Beverly Bryan, Stella Dadzie and
Suzanne Scafe (2018), put a stronger emphasis on the specific lived experiences of Black
working-class women who are confronted with the combined effects of racism, sexism
and (sub-)proletarianisation. 19 Third, through an engagement with the materiality of the
self, oftentimes resulting from a discussion of psychoanalytical and social-psychological
theory. This point requires some explanation insofar as it might appear to contradict the
focus on broader social and historical contexts. Modern psychological research is indeed
characterised by a strong individualist tendency, not least of all because of its practical
orientation towards psychiatric institutions and therapeutical settings. There are various
approaches, however, that sought to go beyond the treatment of symptoms and instead
attempted to reflect upon the social causes of psychological dispositions, as well as the
role which the latter can play as objects of social and political practice. This perspective
has been integrated in critical-theoretical debates in at least two ways: On the one hand,
it has led to a more complex notion of suffering which goes beyond the moment of
physical injury and also includes psychological dispositions such as fear, trauma and
depression that can have a longstanding impact upon the wellbeing of individuals. For
example, Fanon drew on psychoanalytic insights in order to make sense of the damaging
effects of colonial oppression and violence (Fanon 2004: 181-233;). On the other hand, it
has led to a more complex notion of the particular role of affective dispositions in thought
processes and social practices. For instance, the early ISR researchers observed that the
transformation of ambivalent feelings such as anxiety and unease into aggressive desires
is an important technique of conformist, authoritarian and fascist politics (Adorno 1978;
2017; Löwenthal/Guterman 1950; Horkheimer 1993a). The underlying assumption is that
because such a type of political leader

cannot offer them [the supporters, H.P.] the real satisfaction of their needs and must
instead seek to win them over to a policy which stands in variance to their own
interests, he can go only so far in winning his followers' allegiance by rational

18
In chapter 6, I will discuss the private household as a site of conflict over police repression and racism.
19
In this context, they also criticised white feminists such as Federici for their exclusive emphasis on the
private household which does not grasp black women’s particular experience of the “dual day” of both
precarious wage labour and unwaged reproductive work (Bryan et al. 2018: 173-176).

24
 arguments for his goals; an emotional belief in his genius, which inspires exultant
enthusiasm, must be at least as strong as reason. (Horkheimer 1993a: 62)

Emancipatory social and political forces, too, need to rely on and deal with affects, but
what makes them specific is the realisation that a never-ending negotiation of affective
dispositions and intellectual thought processes is required. This affective dimension will
figure prominently during my analysis of public discourses about racism.

Second, critical materialist approaches develop a more complex notion of the

relation between signifier and signified, subject and object. In contrast to traditional
materialism, it is argued that the objective world does not automatically and immediately
manifest itself in the consciousness of those who live within it, but always requires an
active process of “making sense of the world”. Nevertheless, this approach remains
materialist in the sense that it rejects the (neo-)idealist tendency to autonomise linguistic
practices, and instead highlights the significance of a material reality that shapes and
influences their form and content. In his late philosophical reflections upon dialectics and
materialism, for instance, Adorno stresses that ‘all concepts […] refer to
nonconceptualities, because concepts on their part are moments of the reality that requires
their formation, primarily for the control of nature’ (Adorno 1973: 11). More specifically,
such an approach argues that such a notion of objective reality is necessary in order to
evaluate the truth value of linguistic practices. This is indeed different from neo-idealist
approaches that have begun to distance themselves from such an endeavour. For instance,
Foucault claims that questions about ‘what is true or false, real or illusory, scientific or
ideological, legitimate or abusive’ (1996: 393) do not have to be addressed in order to
make critical judgments. There is indeed a good reason for such scepticism: Foucault has
demonstrated that in the modern age “speaking in the name of truth” has become a key
mode of justifying and enacting power and domination (Foucault 1981: 52-56).
Nonetheless, simply avoiding the question of truth leads to a relativist position which falls
behind key insights of the constructivist turn. Based on such a premise, for instance, it
becomes difficult, if not impossible, to argue that there is no empirical proof that “races”
exist (Miles 1993; Montagu 1972). Critical materialist approaches, on the other hand,
highlight the significance of making truth claims but also remain attentive to the dangers
of authoritarian truth regimes. In an insightful reflection upon that tension, Horkheimer
argues that ‘[u]nswerving loyalty to what is recognised as true is as much a moment of
theoretical progress as openness to new tasks and situations and the corresponding

25
refocusing of ideas’ (1993b: 199). 20 For my own research project, it was important to take
such questions of truth seriously. Not least of all because the politics of truth was a key
aspect of the struggles of bereaved families and support actors. As will be demonstrated
in the empirical chapters, these actors have always been trying to find out, in the most
emphatic sense, what had actually happened to their loved ones. And they strongly
disapproved of other accounts which they deemed implausible, misleading, dishonest,
biased, or otherwise misrepresenting the events in questions. The idea to abolish truth as
a criterion of judgment and object of demands, on the other hand, has never crossed their
mind. The question of truth also raises conceptual issues which have not been discussed
so far – in particular the distinction between discourse, ideology and critique. In post-
structuralist discussions, for instance, the concept of ideology has been largely dismissed
due to its (orthodox-)Marxist legacy and replaced by a ubiquitous notion of either
discourse or critique. 21 Other authors, such as Gramsci, adhered to the concept of
ideology but suggested to extend it in a similar fashion to any type of individual and
collective practice of “making sense of the world” (Gramsci 1971: 371-78). I consider
those approaches more useful that maintain a distinction between the concepts of
discourse, ideology, and critique. While the former refers to any social practice engaged
in meaning production, the latter is restricted to very specific types of discursive practice:
those that justify relations of oppression and violence by way of techniques of reality
distortion. For example, Adorno suggests conceptualising ideology as ‘the distorted
consciousness of the real supremacy of the whole’ (Adorno 2003: 299, my translation). 22
In the same vein, Hall et al. argue that ‘when discrepancies appear […] between what is
perceived and what that is a perception of, we have good evidence to suggest we are in
the presence of an ideological displacement.‘ (Hall et al. 2013: 32; see also ibid.: 149,
158, 224, 322) Against this background, racism can be characterised as an ideology par
excellence. As Miles and Brown put it:

Is the notion that humanity is divided into biologically or somatically determined

‘races’ false? Does racism represent human beings in a distorted manner? Does it
represent the relations between human beings in a distorted manner? Is it part of the

20
Horkheimer and Adorno later called this the ‘temporal core’ (Horkheimer/Adorno 2003: xi) and ‘fragility
of truth’ (Adorno 1973: 33-35). For a critique of the authoritarian truth regime of orthodox Marxism and
Stalinism, see Adorno (1973: 3-4, 204-207).
21
See for example Foucault (1996: 392-98); Boltanski (2011) or Laclau/Mouffe (2001: 67-68); see also
Celikates (2018: 1-18).
22
I directly translate from the German original because the existing English translation (Adorno 1973) is
inadequate at these points.

26
 historic and hegemonic Weltanschauung? The answer to all these questions is
affirmative. Racism is an ideology in all these senses. (2003: 8)

It needs to be stressed, however, that ideology is not simply a problem of individual

misrecognition. As Adorno argues, ‘this subjective failure to grasp reality is not primarily
and exclusively a matter of the psychological dynamics of the individuals involved, but
is in some part due to reality itself, to the relationship or lack of relationship between this
reality and the individual.’ (2017: 347-8) In this sense, the critical analysis of ideologies
such as racism always requires a critical analysis of the objective conditions to which they
relate and from which they emerge. At this point, it might also be useful to introduce
another linguistic practice that can be understood as ideology’s countertendency: critique.
Adorno characterised critique as ‘the ability to distinguish between what is known and
what is accepted merely by convention or under the constraint of authority’ (Adorno
1998: 282) Following Horkheimer, its moral driving force is the ‘concern for the abolition
of social injustice’ (Horkheimer 2002: 242). Using a term from second-wave feminism,
critique can also be characterised as the practice of “consciousness raising”, which Smith
calls ‘a method by which, in coming together and talking about our lives, we could
elucidate the common grounds of our oppression’ (Smith 1987: 176). I will come back to
the methodological implications and challenges of such an evaluative approach in the
next chapter.

Third, while critical materialist approaches primarily understand racism as a world

view, they also take into account the practices and processes through which it is inscribed
into the material fabric of contemporary societies. In a critical comment upon the
limitations of Marxist Eurocentrism, for instance, Fanon argues that in colonial regimes
“race” is not only an ideological means of justification, but also the de facto principle of
social organisation:

Looking at the immediacies of the colonial context, it is clear that what divides this
world is first and foremost what species, what race one belongs to. In the colonies
the economic infrastructure is also a superstructure. The cause is effect: You are rich
because you are white, you are white because you are rich.’ (Fanon 2004: 33)

In the postcolonial era, too, the ongoing (sub-)proletarianisation of Black and Asian
communities demonstrates how colonial-racist ideologies have been materialised in the
(global) system of class domination and social stratification (see section 2.2.2). The
underlying issue here is that ideologies such as racism are not only a passive expression
27
of but can become a ‘material force’ (Robinson 2000: 37) within the social world. At this
point, a short reflection upon the relation between racialised identity and political critique
is useful: Various authors that operate with a constructivist lens have argued that any
usage of racialised identities such as “Black” tends to reproduce the essentialist “race
relations” paradigm and thus contributes to upholding the ideological conditions of
racism (see for example Miles 1993: 27-52; Goldberg 2002: 53, 112-115). However, what
these authors do not take into account is the power of “race” to inscribe itself into the
fabric of social reality. Against this background, those affected by racialisation processes
have no choice but to relate to these categories. One way to do so is indeed to simply
reproduce and internalise them. But there is also another way which one might call an
anti-essentialist appropriation and subversion of these objectified categories. As Bryan et
al. put it: ‘When we use the term “Black”, we use it as a political term. It doesn’t describe
skin colour, it defines our situation here in Britain. We’re here as a result of British
imperialism, and our continued oppression in Britain is the result of British racism.’
(2018: 170; see also Sivanandan 2008: xviii) Understood in this way, Black politics is a
complex political project that indeed operates with racialised categories, but only for the
purpose of fighting for a world where these categories cease to have an effect upon
individual lives and social relations. As Gilroy puts it, ‘[t]hat black community emerges
in seeking justice as […] a community that, in recognition of its internal differentiation
and its transient status as an effect of prejudice and discrimination, sometimes even looks
forward to its own abolition’ (Gilroy 2001: 157).

Fourth, critical materialist perspectives highlight that racism does not simply
emerge intuitively in everyday situations or inscribe itself automatically in institutional
terrains, but always requires the intervention of collective actors with sufficient political
power, organisational skills, and material resources. In this sense, the analysis of the
societal origins and ideological expressions of racism needs to be accompanied by the
analysis of the political relations of forces through which the reproduction and
transformation of racist thought and practice is mediated. Furthermore, such a perspective
is crucial in order to take into account the significance of political opposition to racism.
While such relational perspectives can be found in all of those approaches which I have
discussed so far, it is especially strong in the (neo-)Gramscian tradition of “conjunctural
analysis” which stretches from classic contributions, such as those by Nicos Poulantzas
(2014), Bob Jessop (1990), and CCCS-affiliated scholars (CCCS 1982; Gilroy 1987; Hall
et al. 2013; Hall 2014; Solomos 1988), to more recent contributions, such as those by the

28
Research Group “State Project Europe” (Buckel/Wissel 2010; Buckel 2020;
Forschungsgruppe “Staatsprojekt Europa” 2014). I will come back to these approaches in
the second part of this chapter. 23

2.2 The conditions, manifestations and changing patterns of racism, violence, and
confrontation in post-war, (post-)colonial British history

The discussion has so far remained at a high level of abstraction. What is still missing,
however, is a more explicit elaboration of the ‘historical specificity’ (Hall 1980: 336) of
racism as a violent reality, but also as an object of political conflict and opposition, in
modern Britain. In the following, I will introduce three wider context dimensions within
which my empirical examination of the changing patterns of political debates and
conflicts over racist violence and state racism in contemporary Britain will be situated:
First, the legacies of colonialism, imperialism, fascism and Nazism, as well as their role
in recurring public discourses about “national crisis”. Second, the changing pattern of
capitalist socialisation, focusing especially on the crisis of the Fordist mode of
accumulation in the last third of the 20th century. Third, the changing pattern of state
power and public discourse as well as the particular role of legitimation crises since the
late 1960s.

2.2.1 (Post-)colonialism, (neo-)fascism and the crisis of nationalist identity

Although it has been argued that racialised notions of “civilisation” and “barbarity” have
a centuries-old history (Miles/Brown 2003: 22-26; Robinson 2000: 9-18, 71-100), many
authors have pointed to the significance of the modern era for the rise of racism as a
world-shattering form of consciousness and principle of oppression (Arendt 2016;
Miles/Brown 2003: 19-53; Mosse 2020; Robinson 2000: 18-28, 101-20). The invention
and demonisation of racialised “others” populating the margins as well as the outside of
what came to be known as “European civilisation” was a constitutive aspect of the
formation of modern-capitalist nation-states and the justification of their colonial and
imperial endeavours. By the late 19th and early 20th century, in particular in the wake of

23
While I consider the relational-conjunctural approach of the early CCCS useful, I have some reservations
about the specific ways how this framework was applied in order to make sense of the politics of (anti-
)racism in British post-war, postcolonial history. I will come back to this problematic in chapter 4.

29
the Berlin Conference (1884-85), this imperialist conquest took a grip of the vast majority
of the “non-European” world, subjecting their populations to brutal regimes of
exploitation, oppression, violence and mass murder. The British Empire has been the
most important driving force of such a white-supremacist geo-political system (Gott
2012; Mosse 2020: 61-70; Schwarz 2011). However, the reach of racism has never been
confined to the colonised territories. For instance, various historical studies show that
colonial-racist beliefs and practices were prevalent within public discourses, organised
politics, commercial relations, as well as the elite and popular culture of 19th century
“mainland” Britain (Hall 1992; Hall 2002; Hall/McClelland 2010, Hall/Rose 2006;
Mcclintock 1995; Robinson 2000: 29-43; Tabili 1994; Virdee 2014: 9-71). While my
research focuses on the lived experiences and political practices of people of Afro-
Caribbean and South Asian descent, there is a broader range of communities which at
varying historical moments have been affected by (the legacy of) British colonial and
imperial racism, including those of African, East Asian, Middle Eastern, and Irish descent
(see for example Miles/Brown 2003: 19-53; Robinson 2000: 36-39; Solomos 2003: 36-
40; Virdee 2014: 9-36). Taking into consideration this colonial-imperial context is crucial
in order to get to grips with the specificities of racist ideology. The already discussed
aspects of biologism and essentialism are necessary but not sufficient conditions for
defining racism insofar as there are other ideologies, such as sexism or nationalism, that
share the same characteristics (Miles/Brown 2003: 57-72). Against this background, my
suggestion would be to define racism as an ideological world view that separates
humanity into various allegedly self-sustaining biological collectives which are then put
at different levels and/or stages of an imagined “civilisational” hierarchy. As Miles puts
it, racism is based on the myth of ‘a biological hierarchy of fundamentally different
groups of people who possess a variable capacity for “civilisation”.’ (Miles 1993: 2) This
“civilisational” hierarchy is primarily defined through an alleged proximity to or distance
from “nature”. While the European modern nation-states are imagined as the epitome of
human superiority (imagined as a biologically or otherwise inherently determined ability
to dominate nature), the rest of the world is classified in terms of varying degrees of
inferiority (imagined as a biologically or otherwise inherently determined inability to step
out of the “state of nature”). As Goldberg observes, in colonial-racist ideology, ‘those not
white are taken on one hand to inhabit a nature that places them as such beyond (the very
possibility of) order. On the other hand, they are supposed to be ordered through nature,
for they are (pre)conceived as inhabitants of a natural order controllable by enacting laws

30
of nature.’ (Goldberg 2002: 92) From a social-psychological point of view, this
ideological construction always entails a two-fold notion of nature: On the one hand,
“outer nature”, that is, those parts of the world not (yet) under human control; on the other
hand, “inner nature”, that is, the realm of human drives and urges. In this sense, the
imagined lack of controlling “outer nature” is attributed to the imagined lack of
disciplining “inner nature”. Most colonial-racist stereotypes can be analysed as
manifestations of this dual process of naturalisation, such as the stereotype of excessive
sexual and physical power, the stereotype of cognitive weakness and behavioural
submissiveness, the stereotype of lacking diligence and productivity, and the stereotype
of aggressive behaviour. 24 Because of the significant role of questions of sexual
reproduction and hereditary relations, these images are usually modulated in gendered
terms, such as by imagining aggressiveness as a distinctly male and submissiveness as a
distinctly female character trait. The fact that these stereotypes are highly contradictory
does not weaken their power. For, as was discussed in the previous section, their main
function is not to provide an adequate representation of social reality, but to distort that
reality in order to justify oppression, exploitation and violence. Thus, while these images
bifurcate between notions of strength and weakness, they can both be used in order justify
colonial rule. If the colonised subjects are imagined as weak, then they appear as being
in need of guidance and leadership; if they are imagined as strong, then they appear as a
threat that needs to be contained through acts of coercion and violence. 25 Thus, if one’s
own aggressive desire is projected upon the victim, the act of aggression can be re-
imagined as an act of defence. The imagination of racialised others as physically
powerful, aggressive, and uncontrollable is always at the heart of such projective victim-
perpetrator reversals.

The legacy of colonial imperialism is only one of the historical foundations of

racism. The late 19th and early 20th century also saw the rise of “völkisch” political
movements which became the foundation of European fascism and German Nazism
(Arendt 1976: 222-266; Mosse 2020: 136-153). In the British context, Nazi and fascist
movements have never been able to seize state power or gain a hegemonic position in the
public sphere – not least of all because key organisations such as the British Union of
Fascists were officially banned during the Second World War (Copsey 2000: 74-75).

24
For a psychoanalytically inspired analysis of such colonialist tropes, see Fanon (2008).
25
Particularly relevant for the justification of physical violence is the mechanism of projection. Horkheimer
and Adorno conceptualise it in the following way: ‘Impulses which are not acknowledged by the subject
and yet are his, are attributed to the object: the prospective victim.’ (Horkheimer/Adorno 2002: 154)

31
Nevertheless, British (neo-)Nazi and (neo-)fascist movements have been able to establish
themselves as powerful oppositional forces at different moments throughout the 20th
century (Billig 1977; Miles/Phizacklea 1984; Thurlow 1998; Linehan 2000;
Copsey/Worley 2018). While these political forces have always been strong supporters
of the British Empire (Liburd 2018), their ideological repertoire goes beyond colonial
racism. Most notably, there is a distinct tradition of antisemitism and anti-Gypsyism or
anti-Roma racism which has centuries-old roots in Europe, and which has played a
fundamental role not only for German Nazism, but also for its British epigones (see for
example Billig 1977; Thurlow 1998). While all these ideologies share key features – in
particular the deployment of biologistic, demonising enemy constructions that operate
with a notion of “civilisational” hierarchy – they also differ in crucial regards. This can
be exemplified by looking at the relation between colonial racism and antisemitism:
While colonial racism demonises “the colonised” as inherently “inferior”, “primitive” and
“nature-like”, antisemitism demonises “the Jews” as inherently “superior”, “over-
civilised” and “unnatural”. In the antisemitic worldview, then, the threat does not come
“from below”, but “from above”; it is not associated with the “lower levels” but rather
within the “upper echelons” of modern civilisation. As Moshe Postone argues in more
detail:

Probably all forms of racism attribute potential power to the other. This power,
however, is usually concrete - material or sexual - the power of the oppressed (as
repressed), of the “Untermenschen.” The power attributed to the Jews is not only
much greater and “real,” as opposed to potential, it is different. In modern anti-
Semitism it is mysteriously intangible, abstract and universal. […] Its source is
therefore hidden - conspiratorial. The Jews represent an immensely powerful,
intangible, international conspiracy. (Postone 1980: 106) 26

For my own research project, these remarks have various implications: First, there is a
broader history of oppression, persecution and violence that entails the experiences of
Jewish as well as Roma and Traveller communities in addition to Black, Asian and other
communities affected by the legacies of colonial and imperial power. Although my
primary research focus is on the latter, I will nonetheless attempt to point to the former as
well. Second, the enduring influence of (neo-)Nazi and (neo-)fascist forces in Britain
raises questions about their relation to the political mainstream. For the success of such

26
For similar conceptualisations, see Fanon (2008: 135-36) or, more recently, Julius (2010: 288).

32
political forces has always been dependent on the existence of a broader reservoir of
prejudices and resentments within British society. Although (post-)colonial racism has
played the most important role, there is also a broader British tradition of antisemitism
and anti-Gypsyism or anti-Roma racism that cuts across the political spectrum (see Clark
2006; Cohen 1984; Crowson 1995; Defries 2001; Harrison 2006; James 2020; Julius
2010; Picker 2017; Solomos 2003: 40-44; Turner 2002; Virdee 2017). Third, as will be
demonstrated in the empirical analysis, there has been a distinct current of anti-fascist
mobilisation which has figured prominently in the political struggles against racism
(Copsey 2000).

My research project does not focus on the heyday of colonial imperialism, fascism,
and Nazism, but rather on a time period characterised by the decline of these (geo-
)political regimes. A key argument which underpins my research is that this epochal shift
has led to a significant rearticulation of racism in Britain and other Western-European
societies. Given the multiple origins and conditions of racism, this development was
indeed highly complex. While Britain’s role in resisting and defeating European fascism
and German Nazism had become an important source of nationalist pride in official and
hegemonic discourses, the loss of the British Empire was perceived by many political
actors as a moment of “crisis” (see Waters 1997: 210-17). At this point, some remarks on
the concept of crisis should be added. Drawing on the critical-materialist framework
outline above, I would like to distinguish between an objective and a subjective notion of
crisis. On the one hand, a crisis can be characterised as an objective process which results
in the growing inability of a social or political formation to reproduce itself in accordance
with its own principles: ‘Crises occur when the social formation can no longer be
reproduced on the basis of the pre-existing system of social relations.’ (Hall/Schwarz
1988: 96) In this objective sense, then, there was a crisis of the British Empire because it
became increasingly incapable of maintaining direct rule and suppressing anti-colonial
resistance. On the other hand, objective crisis processes only become socially and
politically relevant if they are perceived as such on a subjective level. As Habermas
argues, ‘only when members of a society experience structural alterations as critical for
continued existence and feel their social identity threatened can we speak of crises’
(Habermas 1988: 3). This subjective notion of crisis usually entails a normative
component: Crises are perceived as negative developments with potentially threatening
implications that require some sort of reactive or preventive counteraction. Thus, coming
back to the decline of British and European imperialism, a key question is how this

33
development is perceived subjectively and normatively: One option would be to construe
and embrace it as the welcome end of a century-old regime of oppression, violence, and
injustice. Another option would be to interpret it as a worrying development that threatens
Britain’s (geo-)political and (world-)economic power as well as British national identity.
Only in the latter case would it be interpreted as a crisis moment in the normative sense.
Various authors have argued that it is such a crisis discourse which has become an
important factor in the rearticulation of racism in contemporary Britain. According to
Hall, for instance, ‘[t]he indigenous racism of the 60s and 70s is significantly different,
in form and effect, from the racism of the ‘high’ colonial period. It is a racism ‘at home’,
not abroad. It is the racism not of a dominant but of a declining social formation’ (Hall
2017: 146). Similarly, Virdee argues that since the mid-20th century racism has
manifested itself as ‘an insular and defensive racism, born not out of self-confidence but
anxiety and political retreat.’ (Virdee 2014: 115). A more systematic interpretative
approach has been developed by Gilroy (2001, 2004) who situates this rearticulation
within a broader shift from colonial narcissism to postcolonial melancholia. 27 Inspired by
the psychoanalytical work of Margarete and Alexander Mitscherlich who explored the
political culture of denial in post-Nazi Germany (Mitscherlich/Mitscherlich 1975; Gilroy
2004: 107-8), Gilroy argues that for those who had previously shaped their own identity
in terms of Britain’s official culture of white supremacy, the loss of the colonies was
perceived not only as a loss of geo-political and world-economic power, but also as a loss
of collective identity. Thus, there was a need to overcome this crisis of identity by re-
establishing the lost object of identification. Its central form was the re-imagination of
“mainland” Britain as a territorially enclosed, racially homogeneous nation-state whose
integrity is endangered by the influx of people from the former colonies. This notion
offers not only a new sense of sovereign power and collective strength, but also a
rearticulated version of the old object of racist hostility. Gilroy calls this the desire

to allocate a large measure of blame for the Empire to its victims and then seek to
usurp their honoured place of suffering, winning many immediate political and
psychological benefits in the process. Much of this embarrassing sentiment is today
held captive by an unhealthy and destructive postimperial hungering for renewed
greatness. (ibid.: 103)

27
At this point, I will highlight the strengths of Gilroy’s approach. In the next section, I will argue that its
lack of a materialist theoretical lens leads to various explanatory deficits.

34
What these theoretical and historical reflections indicate is that the dynamics of racist
violence in contemporary Britain are inseparably linked to public discourses about
“national crisis” in the postcolonial moment. Having lost its political function as an
ideology of imperial conquest, racism now gained significance as a crisis ideology, that
is, an attempt to re-establish a culture of white supremacy “at home” after it had lost its
grip “abroad”. By no means, however, is this postcolonial crisis racism less dangerous.
On the contrary, its key mode of operation was to image an endangered “white British
territory” whose integrity needs to be defended against the arrival and settlement of
people perceived to be “non-white”. There are different ways in which this racist notion
of defensiveness can be realised, ranging from the establishment of racist immigration
controls to the perpetration of racist hate crimes. In both cases, however, violence is the
inevitable result. It is for this reason that Gilroy calls postcolonial melancholia ‘the
morbid core of England and Englishness in remorseless decline’ (ibid.: 162).

It would be wrong to assume, however, that there is still a widespread consensus in

mainstream public discussions that racist hostility and violence is legitimate. According
to Miles and Brown, for instance, it was especially the experience of European fascism
and German Nazism that has led to the formation of ‘an official and unofficial consensus
that those who express racist beliefs and/or act in accordance with such beliefs should be
condemned, although the rationale varies.’ (Miles/Brown 2003: 15) However, this
development was only one side of the coin. Apart from the long-standing persistence of
officially racist regimes such as the segregationist regime in the United States or the
apartheid regime in South Africa, racism has also remained a pervasive ideological and
material force in those societies which began to officially condemn it. Most important in
this regard have been attempts to detach racism – on a rhetorical, but not substantial level
– from its biologistic and supremacist legacy. This form of racism, which has been called
“culturalist” or “new racism” (Barker 1981; Balibar 1991; Miles 1993), does not
explicitly operate with phenotypical or other biologist signifiers, but instead draws on
mediating categories, such as “culture”, “religion”, “origin”, “nationality”, “crime” or
“violence”. These categories do not carry racialised meanings per se but can take on these
meanings by way of implication and connotation. In other words, “culturalist racism”
operates with a codified type of racialisation. According to Balibar, its ‘preferred target
is not the “Arab” or the “Black”, but the “Arab (as) junky” or “delinquent” or “rapist”
and so on, or equally, rapists and delinquents as “Arabs” and “Blacks”.’ (Balibar 1991:
49) It needs to be stressed, however, that it continues to operate with essentialist and

35
biologist assumptions. For its notion of “culture” is monolithic, ahistorical, and based on
the assumption that it results from inherent, unchangeable differences and hierarchies
between human beings. According to Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, such a type
of racism ‘posits an essential biological determination to culture but its referent may be
any group that has been “socially” constructed as having a different “origin”, whether
cultural, biological, or historical’ (Anthias/Yuval-Davis 2010: 476). A second form in
which the culture of (violent) racism can be reproduced implicitly is by way of discursive
relativisation and practical deprioritisation. For instance, British fascism continued to be
an important driving force of racist and antisemitic violence throughout the second half
of the 20th century. Despite official condemnations, however, the state’s responses to such
violence have often been insufficient. Most notably, there were many cases of neo-fascist
attacks which were either relativised, depoliticised or blamed on the victims themselves.
I will come back to this problematic during the empirical analysis, such as in the context
of the New Cross Fire case (chapter 6) or the Stephen Lawrence case (chapter 7).

2.2.2 Capitalism, class, and the crisis of socio-economic reproduction

It has been the achievement of critical scholars of (post-)colonialism to take into account
the foundational role of colonialism for the emergence of Western and European modern
nation-states. A key aspect of this endeavour has been to put into question the tendency
among Western and European scholars, including Marxists, to either ignore the legacy of
colonialism altogether, deny its specificity by characterising it as a conventional type of
capitalist exploitation, falsely historicise it as a pre-modern phenomenon, or even
rationalise it as a brutal yet necessary stage of modernisation (Bhambra 2014; 17-59;
Gilroy 1993: 46-58; Goldberg 2002: 36-73). Despite this valuable critique, however, there
is a tendency especially among postmodern accounts to reverse such a reductionist
tendency: Instead of examining its dialectical relation to a wider historical constellation
which encompasses capitalism, nation-statehood and bureaucratic power, the (post-)
colonial condition is introduced as the primary, if not exclusive, determining factor of
social and historical processes. 28 Gilroy, for instance, tends to discuss postcolonial
melancholia as a detached cultural phenomenon without elaborating on its relation to the
changing material living conditions and social relations in contemporary Britain. There
are indeed occasional remarks, such as ‘that our political culture is being transformed by

28
For more detailed critiques of this tendency, see Carter/Virdee (2008: 667-74) and Virdee (2019).

36
management technique, celebrity and a host of bad habits drawn from unchecked
commerce and rampant corporate life’ (Gilroy 2001: 160-61), but these remain
rudimentary. Similarly, Gilroy’s repeated usage of terms such as ‘Britain’s chronic
political crisis’ (ibid.: 159), ‘Britain’s crisis’ (ibid.: 166), ‘the wider political and moral
crisis being identified in overdeveloped nation-states under the sign of multiculturalism’
(ibid.: 162), or ‘a perennial crisis of national identity’ (Gilroy 2004: 97) suggests that his
concept of crisis is confined to the above-discussed moment of collective identity crisis.
The question remains, however, why the decline of the British Empire has provoked such
a lasting crisis of identity in the first place and what kind of gratifications colonial
fantasies offer those who hold them in the present historical moment. As Hall observes,
although racism ‘may draw on the cultural and ideological traces which are deposited in
a society by previous historical phases, it always assumes specific forms which arise out
of present – not past – conditions and organisation of society’ (Hall 2017: 146, emphasis
in original). The critical materialist theoretical framework outlined above is useful to
tackle these problems without falling back on the opposite reductionist tendency. Its key
approach is to understand capitalism, nation-statehood, colonialism and imperialism,
fascism, and Nazism as equally constitutive moments of a broader history of domination
and violence in the modern age. For instance, various authors have argued that colonial
and imperial expansionism has massively expanded in the modern epoch, resonating with
the expansionist dynamics inherent in the capitalist mode of production. As Bryan et al.
argue:

Capitalism in Europe was in its infancy, and there was a growing need for raw
materials and new trading routes and markets. This was the purpose behind the
voyages which heralded our ‘discovery’ in the late fifteenth century. […] They were
motivated, first and foremost, by the need to find new trade and resources to satisfy
their newly-developing money economy. (Bryan et al. 2018: 4)

At the same time, it was only because of the colonial type of conquest and subjugation
that European capitalism could expand so forcefully throughout the entire globe: ‘Most
important of all, however, is the fact that it was the blood, sweat and tears of Black women
and men which financed and serviced Europe’s Industrial Revolution, a revolution which
laid the basis for Europe’s subsequent domination and monopoly of the world’s
resources.’ (ibid.: 6) 29 According to Arendt, there also existed a negatively reinforcing

29
For a similar line of argumentation, see Robinson (2000: 9-28) and Virdee (2019).

37
relation between colonialism and capitalism in the 19th century: She argues that one of
the key driving forces behind the transition from early colonialism to colonial imperialism
by the late 19th century was a series of economic crises in Europe – a process which, in
turn, led to increased geopolitical rivalries between the European powers in the late 19th
and early 20th century (Arendt 1976: 123-157).

Such a dialectical explanatory approach is also useful in order to make sense of the
significance of racism in the postcolonial present. There are especially two explanatory
perspectives I seek to highlight here (see also Petersen/Hecker 2022; Petersen/Struwe
forthcoming). First, a critical analysis of the objective conditions of suffering in
contemporary capitalist societies. Various authors since Marx have argued that what
distinguishes modern capitalist societies from earlier formations such as feudalism is the
establishment of a distinct space of social domination and coercion that is organised
anonymously through principles of commodity exchange, market-based competition,
capital accumulation and bureaucratic administration (Bonefeld 2016, Gerstenberger
2007, Heinrich 2012, Horkheimer 2002; Marx 1996; Mau 2021; Paschukanis 2003;
Postone 1993). 30 From a subjective point of view, these anonymous forms of social
reproduction lead to highly contradictory and unpleasant experiences which play a crucial
role in most people’s everyday lives. Most important in this context is the shift from
external to internal types of domination and coercion. For, within competitive systems of
wealth distribution, it is the work-related performance of the individuals themselves
which determines their success or failure. Following Adorno, modern individuals are
‘conditioned to maintain themselves as independent, self-sustaining units’ and ‘are
continuously admonished to be “rugged” and warned against surrender’ (Adorno 1978:
121). In order to achieve this, they are forced to adapt their behaviour to objective societal
principles which they themselves do not control. However, this conformist behaviour is
by no means a pleasant experience. For it requires the ability to endure stress, exhaustion,
and restraint. Furthermore, they are confronted with what Adorno calls ‘the characteristic
modern conflict between a strongly developed rational, self-preserving ego agency and

30
I want to stress that this is a distinctive but not the exclusive principle of domination and coercion in the
modern age where spaces of personal dependency and unmediated oppression have proliferated. These
include not only the ‘despotism’ (Marx 1996: 362) of the workshop, but also the tyranny of the colony, the
patriarchal household, the fascist collective, the prison, or the camp. However, it is important to reflect
upon these impersonal modes of reproduction because they are relevant for the question of the specific
ways in which political ideologies such as racism, antisemitism, sexism, authoritarianism, and fascism –
which are nothing else than different ways of mobilizing and justifying the desire for the (re-)establishment
of personal relations of oppression – are reproduced in the modern age.

38
the continuous failure to satisfy their own ego demands’ (ibid.: 126). 31 Overall, then,
those patterns which make modern-capitalist socialisation specific also lead to specific
experiences of misery, precarity, and uncertainty. However – and this is the most
important problem for my discussion here – capitalist social formations are characterised
by what can be called an epistemological gap between what is experienced in everyday
life, and which interpretative and explanatory repertoires are available to make sense of
these experiences. As Horkheimer (2002) and Poulantzas (2014) have argued, the
capitalist division of labour is accompanied by a highly specialised regime of knowledge
production which prioritises certain types of knowledge over others – in particular
isolated professional knowledge over a critical insight into the workings of the social
whole. In other words, there is a structural lack of interpretative and explanatory
frameworks that could help to shed light on the objective cause of subjective experiences
of suffering and dissatisfaction. Thus, if people seek to make sense of their subjective
experiences under such difficult circumstances, there is no guarantee that they succeed in
closing this epistemological gap. Second, then, this requires a critical analysis of the
different ways in which people make sense of their desperate and frustrating situation. As
was discussed earlier in this chapter, an ideological and critical response can be
distinguished here. It is now possible to further specify this distinction: An ideological
response denies the impersonal character of modern relations of domination and coercion,
and instead falsely blames certain (imagined) groups of persons. Its key mechanism is
therefore personalisation, that is ‘the tendency to describe objective social and economic
processes, political programs, internal and external tensions in terms of some person
identified with the case in question rather than taking the trouble to perform the
impersonal intellectual operations required by the abstractedness of the social processes
themselves’ (Adorno 2017: 347). This is what is avoided by a critical response. While
taking into account questions of personal responsibility and accountability, its main
emphasis is on engaging with those structural and institutional processes which underpin
social injustice. But a critical response cannot confine itself to providing an alternative
explanatory framework. It also needs to actively engage with the question why an
ideological response is socially prevalent, that is, which objective social circumstances
make it possible.

31
These structural imperatives have a particularly damaging impact upon those who are confronted with
precarious living conditions. To a certain degree, however, they affect everybody who is forced to live and
work under capitalist social relations.

39
 There are different ways in which capitalist social relations can be ideologically
displaced through strategies of personalisation. In the following, I will focus on the
specific role of racism in this regard. 32 As various authors have argued, racism has
established itself as one of the most powerful forms of displacing and denying the
existence of class-based hierarchies and other socio-economic lines of separation by
imagining a homogeneous communitarian order. As Hall argues, the ideological work of
racism is centred on ‘decomposing classes into individuals and recomposing those
disaggregated individuals into the reconstructed unities, the great coherences, of new
ideological “subjects”: it translates “classes” into “blacks” and “whites”, economic
groups into “peoples”, solid forces into “races”’ (Hall 1980: 342). Similarly, Miles argues
that “race”, “people” and “nation” are ‘supraclass categories’ that ‘override the
conflicting interests arising from the social relations of production’ (Miles 1993: 58). The
underlying promise is that those who are included in the “racial” collective will be
relieved from the above-discussed feelings of unpleasure, insecurity and anxiety. The use
of biologistic signifiers is particularly powerful insofar as it offers people a type of
belonging that is determined by their “identity” rather than their thoughts, decisions, and
actions. The material benefits of supporting such an agenda are ambivalent at best.
Indeed, a key material effect of racist discrimination is the racialised stratification of class
relations and social inequalities. As Sivanandan puts it, ‘the attitude of racial superiority
on the part of white workers relegates their black comrades to the bottom of society. In
the event, they come to constitute a class apart, an underclass: the sub-proletariat’
(Sivanandan 2008: 14). 33 However, such a racist stratification of labour and class
relations will by no means solve deeper issues such as structural unemployment, bad
working conditions, or socio-economic inequality. Furthermore, its main political effect
is to weaken forms of collective action that could actually improve the living conditions
of all those suffering from exploitation, competition, poverty and precarity. Unable or
unwilling to offer their supporters any prospect of betterment, racist political forces
instead draw on a violent compensatory mechanism: the incitement of hostile attitudes
and aggressive dispositions against those vulnerable groups imagined as racialised
“enemy groups”. This construction process combines three techniques of reality
distortion: the attribution of social problems to the threatening behaviour of certain

32
For an examination of the relation between antisemitism and capitalism, see Postone (2008) and
Horkheimer/Adorno (2002: 137-172).
33
Similarly, Robinson argues that ‘the dialectic of proletarianization disciplined the working classes to the
importance of distinctions: between ethnics and nationalities; between skilled and unskilled workers; and
[…] between races.’ (Robinson 2000: 42)

40
imagined groups of people (personalisation); the attribution of this behaviour to inherent
character traits (biologisation); and the localisation of these people outside of the “racial”
collective (externalisation). What makes it extremely dangerous is that it transforms
ambivalent feelings of unpleasure into the pleasure to punish and attack others.

A closer look at key elements of racist ideology reveals that the ideological
displacement of unpleasant and unsettling socio-economic experiences plays an
important role. For instance, a key ideological mechanism that will figure prominently in
the empirical analysis is the construction of racialised minorities as a “burden” to the
“national economy”. The underlying assumption is that racialised minorities are
incapable of complying with the bourgeois-capitalist imperatives of discipline and
diligence. This is usually expressed in terms of stereotypical images of a pathological
family life caught in the vicious circle of flawed upbringing, lack of education,
unemployment, and violent behaviour. Another ideological mechanism is to overidentify
racialised minorities with certain types of delinquency and criminality associated with the
urban poor, such as “welfare abuse” or “mugging”. Here the underlying assumption is
that racialised minorities not only burden, but maliciously undermine the existing rules
by “living off the work of others” or “taking a shortcut to material wealth” (see Hall et al.
2013: 395). That there is a much more widespread tendency within capitalist societies to
break existing rules can thus be denied. Furthermore, by focusing on the moment of rule-
breaking as the main problem, the rules themselves do not have to be put into question.
Given that classic colonial myths have served the purpose of justifying the brutal
dispossession and exploitation of colonised populations, it is no surprise that these have
survived as a reservoir for such ideological mechanisms. Furthermore, gendered
stereotypes, in particular those about male aggressiveness, play an important role in order
to further essentialise such images.

Finally, there is one issue that I would like to highlight in this context insofar as it
will figure prominently in my empirical analysis: the relation between racism, capitalism,
and crisis. In the existing literature on the politics of (anti-)racism in British post-war
history, the question of economic crisis has been touched upon routinely, but barely
elaborated in a more systematic fashion. The collaborative works “Policing the Crisis”
(Hall et al. 2013) and “The Empire Strikes Back” (CCCS 1982) are arguably the only
exceptions in this regard. It was only in the wake of the ‘North Atlantic Financial Crisis’
(Sum/Jessop 2013: 417) and the Brexit debacle that there has been a growing interest in

41
taking up this issue (see for example Bhattacharyya 2015; Gupta/Virdee 2020;
Virdee/McGeever 2018). 34 In the following, I will seek to make a small contribution to
theorising this relation between racism, capitalism, and crisis. From an objective
perspective, an economic crisis occurs when the process of capital valorisation within a
given spatial-temporal context is interrupted. Following Heinrich, a capitalist crisis
occurs when ‘a large number of the commodities produced are no longer sellable: not
because there is no existing need for the corresponding products, but because there is no
demand backed by buying power.’ (2012: 169) Such crisis tendencies can occur at
different levels (such as an individual firm, a business sector, a nation-state, or the world-
economy) and can be empirically identified based on different factors (such as growth,
profit, and inflation rates). Furthermore, they tend to be correlated with negative socio-
economic developments (such as unemployment, poverty, and inequality). An important
feature of crisis tendencies in capitalist societies is that they are the result of structural
dynamics. According to Heinrich, for instance, crisis tendencies reveal that the processes
of production and consumption are incongruent with each other because they follow
different principles: the maximisation of profit on the one hand, limited buying power on
the other (Heinrich 2012: 171-75; see also Harvey 2010; Mattick 2011). From a subjective
perspective, there are again different ways in which such crisis tendencies can be
experienced and interpreted. Thus, the analysis of objective crisis tendencies needs to be
accompanied by what Sum and Jessop call ‘crisis construals’ (Sum/Jessop 2013: 395-
439). What is specific about economic crisis tendencies is that they can add another level
of dissatisfaction, anxiety, and confusion. For in such moments people are confronted not
only with their own (potential) failure within the existing economic system, but also with
the failure of that system itself. However, given the structural character of macro-
economic processes, it is highly challenging to make sense of them. A critical crisis
construal would nonetheless seek to do exactly that. An ideological crisis construal, on
the other hand, would offer a displaced representation of these crisis tendencies that
heavily draws on the techniques of personalisation and externalisation. A racist crisis
construal further draws on biologistic assumptions (in particular those about the alleged
existence of “civilisational hierarchies”) in order to “explain” the existence of such crisis
tendencies. The already-discussed strategies of constructing racialised minorities as
“economic burdens”, “welfare abusers” or “criminals” play an important role here. If

34
It can be regarded as symptomatic that it was in this period that the “Policing the Crisis” (Hall et al. 2013)
was reprinted.

42
these become elements of a racialised crisis discourse, their scope and intensity tends to
become greater: Racialised minorities are then imagined not only as deviant elements
within an otherwise functioning socio-economic order, but also as threats to that order
itself. There is another ideological mechanism which is particularly relevant for the
racialisation of crisis construals: spatial confinement. As I will explore in greater detail
throughout the empirical chapters, racialised notions of “slum”, “ghetto” or “inner city”
have figured prominently in public discourses about “crisis” in post-war Britain. I will
also demonstrate that these discourses need to be analysed in order to understand the
spatial pattern of racist violence. As Ashe et al. argue, racist violence is not a ‘random,
sporadic, unpredictable and opportunistic’ (Ashe et al. 2016: 36) practice but follows
what they call a ‘“territorial logic”’ (Ashe et al. 2016: 36). 35 As I will discuss in the
empirical analysis, it is exactly those urban working-class areas which have been at the
centre of racialised crisis discourses that have also been affected by disproportionally
high levels of racist violence. It is for this reason that a key object of my empirical
research will be what Hall et al. call the ideological ‘convergence of crime, policing, race
and the city’ (Hall et al. 2013: xiv)

2.2.3 State power, the public sphere, and the crisis of political legitimacy

There are various ways in which my object of inquiry raises questions about state power
and the public sphere. During the empirical chapters, cabinet members, police officers,
judges, politicians, journalists, editors, civil society actors etc. will be examined in their
different roles as perpetrators or advocates of racist violence; as participants in public
discourses about “race relations” and racism; or as critics of racist violence and advocates
of anti-discriminatory reform efforts. Furthermore, the state and the public sphere will be
analysed as complex institutional terrains on which struggles over racism take place. The
main purpose of this section is to develop a theoretical framework that allows to analyse
this relation between state power, political struggles, public discourses, and racism in a
systematic manner. In the following, I will make a case for a critical materialist approach.
This puts me at a distance from post-structuralist accounts of the relation between state
power and racism which figure prominently in current academic debates. This can be
illustrated by looking at the limitations of one of the most important contributions: David

35
The authors borrow this term from Hesse et al. (1992).

43
Theo Goldberg’s ‘The Racial State’ (2002). Here, the racialisation of state power is
exclusively attributed to an internal state logic which is characterised in abstracted terms
as ‘instituting, operating, and (re)producing homogeneity’ (ibid.: 30). What is missing,
however, is an elaboration of the broader social origins of this logic and thus of the social
embeddedness of state power. Goldberg indeed brings in the problem of modernity, but
tends to approach it in the same abstract terms of reproducing homogeneity and
destroying heterogeneity. In other words, Goldberg fails to distinguish between state and
society which eventually leads him to a ubiquitous notion of state power. Against this
background, it is unsurprising that the state’s racialising power is massively
overemphasised, whereas the broader social origins and political manifestations of racism
disappear from view: ‘In states that are racially conceived, ordered, administered, and
regulated, the racial state could said to be everywhere. And simultaneously seen nowhere.
It (invisibly) defines almost every relation, shapes all but every interaction, contours
virtually all intercourse.’ (ibid.: 98). 36

Critical-materialist approaches, on the other hand, develop a more sophisticated

account of the dialectical relation between state power, political struggles and societal
relations which entails various analytical dimensions. First, there is a stronger emphasis
on the structural position of state power in the wider configuration of modern-capitalist
social relations. One of the key arguments is that the modern state plays an important role
in the (re-)production of capitalist social relations, but that it is only able to play this role
as a distinct entity characterised by principles and mechanisms that differ from the latter.
Nicos Poulantzas, for instance, who in the 1960s and 1970s published influential works
on the relation between state power, capitalism, and class relations, argues that what
makes modern-capitalist societies specific is a ‘relative separation’ (Poulantzas 2014: 18)
between political and economic power. The modern state, Poulantzas argues, is ‘a special
apparatus, exhibiting a peculiar material framework that cannot be reduced to given
relations of political domination.’ (ibid.: 12, emphasis in original) Against this
background, he identifies various generic elements by which this “special apparatus” is
characterised: 37 First, taking up Max Weber’s classic definition, he defines state power
through its ‘monopoly of violence’ (ibid.: 77) in order to regulate, control and guarantee
a given order of social relations and practices. This notion is closely connected to that of
territoriality: ‘The State’, Poulantzas remarks, ‘tends to monopolize the procedures of the

36
For a critique of these obscurantist tendencies in Goldberg’s work, see Carter/Virdee (2008: 670-74).
37
For a similar approach, see Gerstenberger (2007: 662-687) and Jessop (2016: 20-39).

44
organization of space.’ (ibid: 104) Most importantly, the state creates a sovereign territory
whose borders then become a distinct object of state control (in particular the in- and
outflux of goods and people). This process of territorialisation, however, does not
necessarily result in the spatial containment of state power. On the contrary, as was
discussed in section 2.1.1, the transgression of its own frontiers has been a crucial feature
of the history of state power especially in the Western-European context. As Poulantzas
puts it, ‘imperialism is consubstantial with the modern nation’ (ibid: 106). Second,
Poulantzas stresses the state’s unique power to establish and enforce a set of rules and
regulations. Law, he further argues, represents a ‘code of organised public violence’
(ibid., emphasis in original), a general system of rules that specifies the conditions under
which state agencies are authorised and obligated to exert physical violence and bodily
coercion. Third, he argues that the state has the power to appropriate and redistribute a
fraction of the material wealth produced within the confines of the sovereign territory. 38
While this unique access to material wealth constitutes the state’s exceptional power, it
also makes it dependent on the system of economic relations: ‘The financial resources of
the State depend upon changes which conform to fluctuations in the rate of profit and
which are difficult to control.’ (ibid.: 192) A particular issue here is the structural impact
of capitalist crisis dynamics on the state’s resource allocation practices. A useful account
of this relationship between state regulation and crisis tendencies can be found in the early
work of Claus Offe who suggests analysing state action as a type of ‘crisis management’,
that is a particular type of state practice that aims at preventing or minimising recessive
socio-economic developments (Offe 1974). These structural reflections help to
understand why an engagement with state power is so important for an analysis of the
politics of (anti-)racism. For its ability to use physical violence in order to enforce rules
makes it a key force of inscribing of racism (or anti-racism) into the material, institutional
and legal fabric of contemporary societies. However, given its dependence on financial
resources extracted from the capitalist production process, the state’s classificatory and
regulatory power cannot be discussed in isolation from broader (world-)economic and
(geo-)political developments.

Second, critical-materialist approaches highlight that the concrete organisation of

state power is highly complex and contradictory. Instead of simplifying it as a ‘monolithic

38
Poulantzas largely discusses the principle of taxation and state-owned business. However, it should be
added that in the history of European statehood, colonial types of exploitation had been a crucial form of
state revenue.

45
entity’ (Buckel/Wissel 2010: 35), the state is analysed as a set of institutional terrains
characterised by a specific division of labour, separation of powers, stratification of
positions, distribution of resources and prioritisation of goals. 39 There are at least three
institutional terrains which will figure prominently in my empirical analysis. First, state
institutions that execute the state’s monopoly of violence, such as governmental bodies,
police agencies and judicial institutions. Given its central role for my case analysis, I will
come back to the institutional processes and selectivities of the British law enforcement
and criminal justice system in the next chapter (see section 3.2.2) Second, state
institutions that organise the process of democratic decision-making, in particular
political parties which compete over electoral majorities in order to seize control of state
power, and parliaments which transform electoral majorities into legal frameworks.
While all representative democracies tend towards what Marcuse calls ‘a system of
subdued pluralism’ (Marcuse 1991: 50), a special feature of the British parliamentary
system is its bipartisan structure that has historically favoured the Conservative Party and
Labour Party. As Hall observes: ‘Postwar parliamentary politics have been marked by
many contradictory cross-currents. But the big parliamentary formations and the two-
party system have, despite several flutters, remained remarkably stable and durable.’
(Hall 1988a: 58) Third, state institutions that have been established as a response to
external public demands. Althusser calls these ‘associative ideological state apparatuses’
and uses as an example welfare institutions and corporatist trade unions (Althusser 2014:
114-7). As will be discussed throughout the empirical chapters, the formation of
“associative apparatuses” in the area of “race relations” has been a crucial feature of the
wider political struggles over racism in contemporary Britain.

Third, critical materialist approaches offer insights into the relation between state
power, social and political struggles. A useful theoretical framework has been formulated
by Poulantzas who in his latest work suggests conceptualising the state as ‘the specific
material condensation of a relationship of forces among classes and class fractions’
(Poulantzas 2014: 128-29, emphasis in original). This definition has two implications: On
the one hand, the state is directly influenced and shaped by the practices of social actors.
On the other hand, the state is not only a passive expression of already-existing relations
of forces but plays an active part in their formation and institutionalisation. As Poulantzas
puts it, the state not only ‘bathes in struggles that constantly submerge it’ (ibid.: 141), but

39
Such an notion of state power can already be found in Marx’ later political writings (Marx 1979: 185;
Marx 1986: 329; see also Jessop 2002).

46
also ‘plays a constitutive role not only in the relations of production and the powers which
they realize, but also in the totality of power relations at every level of society.’ (ibid.:
45) As Jessop puts it, Poulantzas concept of ‘material condensation’ entails both the
‘reflection’ and the ‘refraction’ of given relations of forces (Jessop 2016: 53). Seeking to
overcome Poulantzas’ class reductionism, Buckel et al. suggest opening up his definition
to a broader set of social relations and struggles: ‘The state is a materialised social
relation: a class and gendered relation as well as a relation between citizens and their
others. It not only stabilizes the existing order, but also contributes to producing these
gendered, ethnicised and class subjects.’ (Buckel et al. 2014: 29, my translation).

Fourth, this emphasis on wider political relations of forces directly raises questions
about the public sphere. In addition to parliamentary debates and other official public
forums, the public sphere encompasses a complex network of media organisations, civil
society associations, pressure and lobby groups, social and political movements. In
contemporary capitalist societies, the public sphere is a social space characterised by an
asymmetrical relation of participation and representation. At its centre is the process of
professionalised and commercialised process of news production. Given that one of its
core tasks is to scrutinise state institutions and political parties, news discourse plays an
important role in facilitating the condensation of relations of forces on the state terrain
(see Hall et al. 2013: 56-80; Van Dijk 1988: 95-137). The most influential effort to
theorise this relation between state power and the wider public sphere is Gramsci’s theory
of hegemony. His main argument is that political domination in democratic-capitalist
societies cannot be secured by repressive means alone, but always needs to be
accompanying by attempts to create consent, legitimacy, and loyalty among the wider
population – or at least a significant majority that will guarantee the next electoral victory
(Gramsci 1971: 445-557). A hegemonic constellation, he argues, ‘is characterised by the
combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force
predominating excessively over consent’ (ibid.: 248). And while the primary purpose of
hegemony is to seize and secure state power, it is created in a much wider set of public
forums, such as the areas of mass media and mass culture (ibid.: 80, 148-149, 195, 342).
At the same time, however, the public sphere goes far beyond the realm of electoral
politics and state policy. As Jessop puts it, the public sphere as ‘a distinct but internally
differentiated force in its own right’ (Jessop 2016: 61; see also Hall et al. 2013: 60-3;
Fairclough 1995: 91-111). In this sense, the public sphere is also an important space of
(self-)organisation and (self-)representation by those actors who do not seek to seize state

47
power, influence the policymaking process, or participate in electoral campaigns. For my
own research, such an analysis of between oppositional and hegemonic political actors
has been of the utmost important. I will come back to the methodological implications of
such a perspective in the next chapter.

Fifth, critical materialist approaches offer useful insights into the specifically
political dimension of crisis tendencies. Indeed, the concept of hegemony is closely
connected to that of crisis. For if hegemony is understood as the project of organising
political domination in a social formation characterised by contradictions, hierarchies,
and antagonisms, then it becomes necessary to ensure that oppositional tendencies do not
have a destabilising effect on the existing social and political order. However, if the
neutralisation of political opposition does not work, then the hegemonic project is
objectively confronted with what can be called a crisis of legitimacy or hegemony.
Following Habermas, [l]egitimation crises result from a need for legitimation that arises
from changes in the political system […] and that cannot be met by the existing supply
of legitimation.’ (Habermas 1988: 48) Similarly, Hall et al. introduce the concept of crisis
of hegemony as a moment ‘when the whole basis of political leadership and cultural
authority becomes exposed and contested.’ (Hall et al. 2013: 217, emphasis in original;
see also CCCS 1982). The emergence of such crisis moments is complex and needs to be
analysed in conjunction with the above-discussed economic and ideological crisis
tendencies. At this point, I will restrict myself to mentioning two dynamics which will be
important during the empirical analysis: First, the transformation of an economic crisis
tendencies into a crisis of legitimacy. This can occur when a government provokes large-
scale political opposition because it has been unable to tackle socio-economic crisis
tendencies, or because it has attempted to tackle them by way of unpopular social and
economic policies. As Solomos et al. argue, ‘[…] the organizing principles underlying
state intervention cannot ignore the need to maintain the conditions of accumulation, but
neither can the state ignore for long the necessity to organize consent.’ (Solomos et al.
1982: 16; see also Althusser 2014: 136-7; Offe 1984: 51-61; Hall et al. 2013: 208-17).
Second, the transformation of a crisis of identity into a legitimation crisis. In this case,
the inability of dominant political forces to prevent the erosion of a prevalent type of
collective identity might lead to growing opposition by those who feel threatened by this
erosion. In chapter 4, for instance, I will discuss how far-right political actors attempted
to mobilise racist anxieties about migration from the (former) colonies in order to put into
question the legitimacy of the “post-war settlement” and its migration regime.

48
3. Methodological perspectives: Critical materialist social, political and discourse
analysis

In this chapter, I will specify how the theoretical perspectives outlined in the previous
chapter can be operationalised in the form of a methodologically rigorous analytical
framework. First, I will give an outline of the context-oriented case-based research design
which I chose in order to carry out my empirical analysis (3.1). Second, I will introduce
three sets of categories used to carry out both case and context analysis based on the
multi-dimensional critical-materialist framework outlined in the previous chapter (3.2).
Third, I will reflect on my choice to use archival research as the primary form of data
collection and further elaborate on the process of data selection (3.3). Finally, I will reflect
on the ethical-political limitations and challenges of my research project (3.4).

3.1 Research design

There are various bodies of literature that directly speak to my chosen theoretical
perspectives. More specifically, I focused on those approaches that are informed not only
by the critique of ‘the secure terrain of functionalist explanatory patterns’ (Gerstenberger
2006: 7, my translation) and the attempt to ‘restore agency to sociological analysis’
(Calhoun 2003: 384), but also by the critique of ‘postmodern scepticism’ (Tilly/Goodin
2006: 6) about the validity of analysing large-scale processes and wider historical
transformations. Furthermore, I focused on those accounts that remain attentive to ‘the
interconnectedness of discursive practices and extra-linguistic social structures’ (Wodak
et al. 2009: 9; see also Fairclough 2003: 14-5; Fairclough 2012: 9). Particularly relevant
for my own research process were the following approaches: First, Martin Reisigl and
Ruth Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach which is inspired, inter alia, by the work
of the Institute of Social Research (Reisigl/Wodak 2001; Wodak 2015; Reisigl 2018).
Second, various approaches that work with a Gramscian and Poulantzasian theoretical
approach, such as the early writings of Stuart Hall and the Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies (Hall et al. 2013; CCCS 1982), and the Historical-Materialist Political
Analysis developed by the Research Group “State Project Europe” (Forschungsgruppe
“Staatsprojekt Europa” 2014; see also Buckel/Wissel 2010; Buckel 2013; Wissel 2015).
Based on these approaches, I developed a more detailed research design that allows for a
sufficient engagement with my research questions and objectives. In the following
sections, I will provide an outline of its key parameters and reflect upon their respective

49
methodological limitations and challenges. More specifically, I will elaborate on my
choice to combine a series of in-depth case studies with a multi-layered contextual
analysis.

3.1.1 Case analysis

As indicated in the introduction, there are at least dozens, if not hundreds, of cases of
deadly violence which in the second half of the 20th century have led to criticism of and
protests against racism within the British law enforcement and criminal justice system.
This makes it difficult to explore – and do justice to – all of these cases within the confines
of my research project. Against that background, I decided to focus on an historically
comparative in-depth analysis of a selection of cases rather than a comprehensive yet less
detailed “surface analysis”. Most notably, I decided to focus on those cases which have
played a catalytic role in the wider politics and history of (anti-)racism in contemporary
Britain. 40 A case-based design is also useful to avoid a contextual perspective that
abstracts from the concreteness and complexity of the struggles in question. As Tilly
argues, historical-sociological research needs to take into account ‘the value of getting
the microhistory right in order to understand the macrohistory’ (Tilly 1984: 74). The
selection of a limited number of cases that had an impact on the wider pattern of (anti-)
racist politics turned out to be very useful in order to mediate between these two levels of
“microhistory” and “macrohistory” in a non-reductive fashion.

Such a case-based research design is nonetheless limited in various regards. Most

notably, the focus on a limited number of incidents of extreme violence runs the risk of
drawing a selective and distorted picture of the complex reality of racist hostility and
violence in Britain. Of all the numerous incidents of racist deadly violence only a handful
have received major political, media and legal attention. For instance, as I will discuss in
chapter 7, the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence occurred at a time when many more
people from racialised minority communities became the victims of murderous racist
attacks or died under contentious circumstances in state custody. Against this
background, there is a danger that my decision to carry out a limited number of “high
profile” case studies contributes to a wider tendency within political and academic
debates to ignore the vast majority of other justice and protest campaigns. Such a selective

40
For a more detailed outline of the selection of cases, see 3.3.2.

50
research design might also lead an interpretative framework that disconnects the problem
of deadly racism from the much more pervasive reality of everyday, institutionalised, and
organised racism within British social and political life. Finally, it needs to be highlighted
that my specific rationale that focuses on those cases that have led to widespread protest
dynamics and public discussions has led me to prioritise the political struggles of and in
solidarity with communities of Afro-Caribbean and, to a lesser degree, South Asian
descent. Furthermore, the case analysis exclusively focuses on the London metropolitan
area (although all of these cases had nation-wide implications as well). To a certain extent,
then, my choice to use broader political impact and public resonance as the primary
criterion of case selection echoes group-specific and socio-geographical asymmetries in
the history of political struggles over racism in contemporary Britain.

Trying to mitigate these limitations, I sought to deploy various research strategies.

The most important strategy is to continuously reflect on the limitations and selectivities
of my case-based design throughout the research process itself. An important element of
this strategy was to bring to mind during the presentation of empirical results that each
analysed case was surrounded and influenced by many other incidents that raised similar
concerns of everyday, organised and institutionalised racist violence. Furthermore, in
order to subvert the narrow focus of my case-based design, I considered it important to
connect each case study with a contextual analysis that sheds light on the wider social and
political constellation within which each case had occurred. It is to such a ‘context-
sensitive’ perspective (Reisigl/Wodak 2001: 31; Jessop 2016: 45) that I will now turn.

3.1.2 Context analysis

Each case study will be embedded within a contextual analysis that sheds light on the
underlying causes as well as the shifting patterns of the political struggles over racist
violence in contemporary Britain. More specifically, I have worked with two sets of
analytical categories which have proved useful in order to contextualise and periodise
these political struggles.

First, I drew on Fairclough’s distinction between the ‘situational’, ‘institutional’

and ‘societal level’ (Fairclough 1989: 25-31, 162-168). 41 The situational level refers to

41
For a similar framework, see Marcuse (1991: 196-7) and Reisigl and Wodak (2001: 40-1).

51
the immediate encounter between different collective actors within a given
institutionalised or routinised setting, such as cabinet meetings, parliamentary sessions,
court hearings, police operations, press conferences, public demonstrations, or other street
encounters. It is this situational level which is the starting point of my in-depth case
studies. The institutional level refers to the entirety of regularised and materialised
practices which are characteristic of a given institutionalised terrain. In my research
project, for instance, the system of repressive, ideological, and associative state
apparatuses is an important terrain on which struggles at the situational level have taken
place. The societal level refers to the overarching relations of power, domination and
hegemony which emerge from and impact on the entirety of interactions and
confrontations at the situational and institutional level. As discussed in the previous
chapter, I am particularly interested in examining how the patterns of racist oppression
and anti-racist opposition are synchronised with the following societal patterns: the
decline of the British Empire and the postcolonial recomposition of the British nation-
state and its political culture during the second half of the 20th century; and the crisis of
global capitalism following the 1973 Oil Crisis and its fundamental impact on organised
politics throughout the last third of the 20th century.

Second, I seek to explore in which ways and to what extent these situational,
institutional, and societal patterns have changed over time. To that end, I draw on various
historical-sociological and conjunctural Marxist approaches that go beyond chronological
perspectives and instead analyse social change as the articulation of multi-layered social
processes characterised by distinct temporalities. In his study of the history of Black
Marxist thought in the wake of the emergence and transformation of “racial capitalism”,
Cedric J. Robinson, for instance, observes that ‘the construction of periods of time is only
a sort of catchment for events. […] Increments of time contoured to abstract measure
rarely match the rhythms of human action.’ (Robinson 2000: 213) Similarly, Bob Jessop,
in an essay on Marx’s analysis of the dynamics of (counter-) revolution in mid-19th
century France, highlights the advantages of ‘periodizations’ over ‘chronologies’ (Jessop
2002; see also Jessop et al. 1988: 13-4). While the latter operate with ‘a single unilinear
time scale’ that provides ‘a simple narrative explanation for what occurs by identifying a
single temporal series of actions and events’ (Jessop 2002: 184), the former are attentive
‘to intersecting and overlapping time horizons’ and ‘rests on an explanatory framework
oriented to the contingent, overdetermined interaction of more than one such series.’
(ibid.). Such an approach goes beyond the simple description of what has happened and

52
instead examines different patterns of (dis-)continuity on both the situational,
institutional, and societal level. Against this background, I suggest distinguishing
between four levels of change: 42 Beginning with the smallest unit of analysis, the concept
of events can be used to analyse immediate forms of (inter-)action at the situational level.
Possible examples relevant to my research are incidents of racist violence, police
operations, court sessions, press conferences or public meetings. Although distinct events
can have a tremendous effect on future social and political developments, they usually do
so in conjunction with other events. Second, then, the concept of episodes is useful to
analyse these connections. Episodes can be defined as ‘bounded and connected sequences
of social action’ (Tilly/Goodin 2006: 15) that relate to each other through a shared
collective purpose or similar thematic horizon. Third, the concepts of periods can be used
to analyse medium-term developments that affect not only the situational, but also the
institutional level. An example of a periodical question would be to what extent and in
which ways the patterns of death in state custody have been informed by changes in the
areas of state policy, police strategy or media discourse. Finally, the concept of
conjunctures is useful in order to analyse patterns of (in-)stability at the level of social
relations that go beyond the institutional level. Following Hall et al., a conjunctural
perspective

deploys a type of periodisation based on a distinction between moments of relative

stability and those of intensified struggles and unrest, which may result in a more
general social crisis. […] So long as a period is dominated by roughly the same
struggles and contradictions and the same efforts to resolve them, it can be said to
constitute the same conjuncture. (Hall et al. 2013: xv)

It is such a conjunctural perspective which my research project aims at in order to deal

with the question under which conditions the political conflict dynamics over racist
violence and state racism in Britain have changed between the late 1950s and late 1990s.
More specifically, examines to what extent and in which ways Britain’s loss of geo-
political and world-economic power in the second half of the 20th century had been
articulated within and mediated by the plethora of confrontational episodes over racist
(state) violence.

42
For a similar yet less precise analytical framework, see Reisigl (2018: 53-4).

53
3.2 Categories of Analysis

Further substantiating and concretising both case and contextual analysis, I made use of
three sets of analytical categories. Beginning with the broadest analytical lens, I will
discuss how I analysed socio-historical patterns as well as relations of forces operating
within the areas of state politics as well as the wider public sphere. I will then move on
to the analysis of institutional processes as well as their selective effects on these relations
of force. Finally, I will focus on discursive and ideological strategies which collective
actors deploy to realise their political goals.

3.2.1 Structural patterns and political relations of forces

As was argued in the previous chapter, a constitutive aspect of modern-capitalist societies

is their structural mode of reproduction which operates ‘behind the backs’ (Marx 1996:
54), that is beyond the grasp and reach of the individual actors who are confronted by
them. The changing patterns of capitalist accumulation, for instance, are not only
influenced by decision making processes by political and economic elites but also
mediated by unregulated processes of exploitation and competition on a global scale. The
particular problem of capitalist crisis tendencies demonstrates how far-reaching the social
and political impact of such structural economic patterns can be. During the empirical
analysis, I will restrict myself to analysing various macro-economic and socio-economic
developments which can be considered empirical symptoms of underlying crisis
tendencies, such as changing rates of growth, industrialisation, inflation, unemployment,
or poverty. Such a structural analysis will help to contextualise the changing political
relations of forces and institutional settings that took place within the period in question.

A second category of analysis that I utilised during my empirical research are

political relations of forces. While there are structural patterns that go beyond the strategic
impact of collective actors, this does not mean that the moment of decision-making and
collective action is irrelevant. In order to analyse such relations of forces, it is useful to
draw on the analytical distinctions outlined above (3.1.2). On a situational and
institutional level, the analysis would primarily focus on the interactions between
different actors situated within certain institutional settings, such as parliamentary
sessions, court hearings or street confrontations. Large parts of the in-depth case studies
will focus on the conflictual relations between collective actors within situational and

54
institutional settings. A useful way of analysing the relation between collective actors and
wider societal relations is the concept of ‘hegemony projects’ which was developed by
Buckel et al. (2014) 43 based on the works of Jessop (1990: 207-15) as well as Bieling and
Steinhilber (2000). Their main argument is that political actors who are involved in a
particular debate or conflict are usually part of a much wider configuration of struggles
over power, leadership, and dominance. This embeddedness is not only based on direct
forms of interaction and cooperation, but also the more indirect process of alignment
between all those actors who share the same ‘overarching political narrative’ (Buckel et
al. 2014: 46). Their relatively loose character also means that hegemony projects can be
characterised by internal tensions and conflict dynamics. As the main criterion for
distinguishing concrete hegemony projects, Buckel et al. suggest making use of different
political traditions and cleavages by which the Western-European political landscape has
been shaped, such as (neo-)liberalism, conservatism, and social democracy (Buckel et al.
2014: 64-80; see also Buckel 2013: 22-29; Wissel 2015: 60-74). I think these political
traditions are useful starting points in order to make sense of the political landscape in the
British context. More specifically, given the centralised, bipartisan structure of the British
party system, it is especially the social-democratic and conservative hegemony projects
that need to be taken into consideration in order to make sense of the relationship between
political struggles, public discourses and policymaking processes.

Buckel et al. also highlight that the active participation in or contribution to a

particular hegemony project is only one of many ways in which social and political actors
can relate to existing hegemonic relations. Their argument is that there are many social
and political actors which ‘impact on the societal relations of forces only in very indirect
ways.’ (Buckel et al. 2014: 51). More specifically, they introduce the notion of ‘counter-
hegemonic strategies’ (ibid.) which refers to all those political actors who primarily focus
on criticising and opposing the existing hegemonic constellation but are less interested in
formulating and realising an alternative hegemonic vision. Another key feature is that
these actors primarily criticise other political actors, but not the underlying process of
hegemony formation itself (electoral politics, media discourse, public campaigning etc.).
In this sense, their strategic orientation can be characterised as what McAdam et al. call
‘contained contention’, that is, an approach ‘in which all parties are previously established
actors employing well established means of claim making.’ (McAdam et al. 2001: 8) I

43
The following quotes are translated by me.

55
will use that category in order analyse two conflicting political currents: On the one hand,
various left-wing political actors both within and outside of the Labour Party as well as
the distinct field of anti-racist, anti-fascist and minority-led political organisations that
primarily chose conventional modes of claim making. On the other hand, various right-
wing populist and far-right organisations that oppose the existing “race relations” policies
as not oppressive enough, while radically putting into question the principles of
representative democracy as such. Furthermore, Buckel et al. introduce the notion of
‘anti-hegemonic strategies’ (ibid.) which refers to those actors that strictly reject
hegemony as a mode of political domination. This category is useful in order to refer to
those collective actors that avoid established channels of public communication and
decision-making or are even willing to break the law in order to express and enact their
views. The underlying strategic approach can be called ‘transgressive contention’, that is,
an attempt to ‘employ innovative collective action […] that are either unprecedented or
forbidden within the regime in question.’ (McAdam 2001: 8) Here again, I will use this
category to analyse two opposing political forces: On the one hand, minority, anti-racist
and anti-fascist activists who formulate a more fundamental critique of the existing social,
economic and political order, and advocate militant forms of political confrontation and
self-defence against racist violence; on the other hand, far-right activists who call for the
establishment of authoritarian, dictatorial and/or fascist political regimes, and actively
incite or perpetrate violence against minorities or political opponents.

Finally, it needs to be stressed that the distinction between hegemonic, counter-

hegemonic, and anti-hegemonic political forces is oftentimes more complex. In their
study of the changing pattern of ethnic minority political activism in Britain throughout
the 1980s and 1990s, Shukra et al. (2004) provide a useful concept in order to analyse
such overlapping dynamics. They suggest distinguishing a particular type of politics that
seeks to establish a ‘transitional public sphere […] positioned between the mainstream
public sphere in which political participation centres on institutions and an alternative
public sphere in which social networks have developed new forms of social capital
through non-institutional forms of participation.’ (ibid.: 33, emphasis in original) In this
sense, political actors informed by this approach ‘are situated outside mainstream political
institutions whilst maintaining a close relationship with that mainstream.’ (ibid.: 38),
which allows them to ‘play a bridging role that creates new pathways and channels of
communication between grassroots organisations and formal, public institutions.’ (ibid.:
46) Drawing on the above-introduced terminology, this political approach could also be

56
characterised as the attempt by counter-hegemonic political forces to enter the
institutional terrains of hegemonic political forces, without entirely submitting to the
routines, expectations and selectivities by which these terrains are characterised.
Consequently, its strategic repertoire is characterised by a more complex oscillation
between ‘contained’ and ‘transgressive contention’ (McAdam 2001: 8).

3.2.2 Institutional Processes and Selectivities

A key argument of my theoretical discussion was that political discussions and conflicts
in contemporary societies are not “free floating” processes but emerge within and relate
to existing institutional settings. This also means that institutional settings play an
important role in the reconfiguration of political relations of forces in alignment with
broader societal relations and structural patterns. What remains to be specified is how
institutional settings can be analysed empirically. In the following, I will focus on two
aspects: First, I will offer a more specific framework for the analysis of police and judicial
responses to hate crime incidents which will be at the centre of my empirical analysis.
Second, I will elaborate on the concept of institutional selectivities which is particularly
useful in order to analyse the relation between institutions and relations of forces.

One of the tasks of my research projects is to analyse the changing responses of the
British law enforcement and criminal justice system to incidents of deadly violence that
have led to critique of and protests against racism. Benjamin Bowling (1998: 261-76) has
developed a useful analytical framework that distinguishes between five stages of
institutional response to violent racism: 44 The first stage is the ‘input into the police
system by the informant/victim and its initial processing by the despatcher’ (ibid.: 261).
If the despatcher does not consider the incident relevant, it exits the system. The second
stage relates to ‘the initial response and reporting of the incident by a “mobile unit” or
relief officer’ (ibid.: 261) who is supposed to interact with victims, witnesses, and
potential suspects, secure the crime scene, gather first evidence, and further assess the
nature of the incident. If it is still considered a potential crime, it is referred to the crime
desk. Otherwise, it exits the system. The third phase starts with the crime desk’s decision
to proceed with a criminal investigation. Depending on the specific classification of the

44
While Bowling’s model primarily focuses on racist violence by non-state actors, I think it can be slightly
amended it in order to take into account the specific issue of racist police violence.

57
case, it is then referred to the responsible investigating body, such as the Criminal
Investigation Department, a special squad or a body responsible for the investigation of
police misconduct. 45 At this point, I would like to add another part of that stage which is
not mentioned in Bowling’s framework: If the incident involves the death of a person, the
police investigation is accompanied by an inquest, that is, a judicial procedure led by a
coroner who is commissioned to determine the person’s cause of death. This decision is
of the utmost importance for the (dis-)continuation of the police investigation. If the
investigating police unit has determined a suspect, it can decide to charge the suspect and
refer the case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The fourth stage consists of ‘the
processing of crime incidents through the investigative process to court action’ (Bowling
1998: 261). This stage begins with the CPS decision to start a criminal prosecution and is
followed by a criminal trial. At the end of the trial, the magistrate, judge, or jury decides
on the guilt or innocence of the defendant(s) and, in case of a conviction, on the sentence.
Bowling further distinguishes a fifth stage of ‘monitoring racial incidents’ (ibid.: 275),
that is, the documentation of such incidents and the production of statistical overviews.
Finally, I would like to add two further stages which are missing in Bowling’s framework.
Sixth, the appeal process which begins with the formal submission of an appeal request
which needs to be permitted by a judge and which is then heard at the Court of Appeal
(see Sanders et al. 2010: 609-662). And seventh, the initiation of official investigations
into the quality of the previous stages, which can take the form of an internal police review
or a public inquiry. The latter is particularly relevant insofar as it is formally independent
from government influence and, if held as a statutory inquiry, has the power to compel
witnesses to give evidence. What is useful about such a processual model is that it allows
for a more systematic evaluation of the extent to which and the ways in which different
cases have reverberated through the British police and criminal justice system. Moreover,
this model highlights that each threshold in the chain of institutionalised responses is
based on decision-making processes which have considerable effects on further outcomes
and possibilities.

A useful way to further conceptualise the power effects resulting from these
institutional processes is the concept of institutional selectivities. According to Offe, who
initially developed this concept, selectivity can be regarded as a ‘sorting process’ or ‘filter
system’ (Offe 1974: 36, 39) that leads to an asymmetrical attentiveness to different topics

45
Since the 1980s, this stage also includes, officially at least, a ‘follow-up on racial incidents’ (Bowling
1998: 273) by a community relations police unit.

58
well as an asymmetrical responsiveness to different actors. Offe further distinguishes
between four dimensions of selectivity. First, structural selectivity refers to the
exclusionary dynamics that result from the institution’s structural position within the
wider societal formation. This includes the ‘restricted availability of material resources
and information’ (ibid.), and the limited ‘radius of action’ (ibid.) within which an
institution is officially commissioned and authorised to operate. Second, ideological
selectivity refers to ‘the repressiveness of a system of norms’ (ibid.) which creates
hierarchies between different actors’ opportunities to participate in public debates and
decision-making processes. Third, processual selectivity refers to those exclusionary
dynamics that are inscribed into the ways in which institutions respond to a certain
problem, claim or conflict. Offe highlights that ‘every procedural rule creates conditions
of being favoured, or conversely being excluded, for certain issues, groups or interests.’
(Offe 1974: 40) Finally, repressive selectivity refers to ‘the application or threat of acts
of repression by the State apparatus through the organs of police, the armed forces, and
the judiciary.’ (Offe 1974: 40) In this sense, the police’s use of repressive means not only
inflicts physical violence on others, but also has a disciplining and restraining effect on
their behaviour.

The concept of institutional selectivity is very useful in order to analyse what in

academic and political debates has been called “institutional racism”. According to
Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton, who first introduced that concept, institutional
racism ‘originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society’ and
therefore becomes ‘less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific
individuals committing the acts’ (Ture/Hamilton 1992: 4, emphasis in original). The
underlying assumption is that the way an institutional setting is organised and structured
can have racist effects, even if the actors that operate within it do not hold explicitly or
strongly racist views. Over the past years, however, the usefulness of the concept has
been put in question insofar as it runs the risk of shifting the responsibility away from
concrete actors, in particular those with decision-making power (see for example Bourne
2001). 46 The multidimensional model of institutional selectivity, on the other hand, is
useful in order to avoid both one-dimensional institutional and agential approaches. For
its multiple analytical entry points allow to examine the complex relation between
decision-making processes, ideological justifications, routinised practices, and structural

46
As will be discussed in chapter 7, such critical interventions were a response to the limitations of the
concept of institutional racism formulated by the Macpherson Inquiry.

59
constraints. At this point, I would like to add another analytical distinction suggested by
Benjamin Bowling and Coretta Phillips who shed light on the inscription of racist
discrimination into the law enforcement and criminal justice system by distinguishing
between ‘de jure’ and ‘de facto’ discrimination (Bowling/Phillips 2002: 39; see also
Bowling 1998: 244-56): 47 While, de jure discrimination refers to those discriminatory
practices that directly flow from legal frameworks and official policies, de facto
discrimination occurs on the level of everyday work routines and occupational (sub-
)cultures that are a constitutive aspect of the functioning of these institutions. This
conceptual distinction is especially relevant for my research topic insofar as the
phenomenon of police violence tends to be located on the de facto level, that is, emerges
in the context of police operations that are characterised by a high degree of discretion
and lack of public scrutiny. 48

3.2.3 Discursive Strategies

In order to analyse the ways in which collective actors relate to each other and position
themselves within public forums and institutional settings, it is useful to look at the
specific strategic repertoires which they develop and deploy for that purpose. Following
Tilly, a strategic repertoire can be defined as ‘a distinctive array of claim-making
performances’ (Tilly 2006.: 427) by social and political actors within a given socio-
historical context. These repertoires consist of various individual strategies which,
according to Reisigl and Wodak, can be defined as ‘a more or less accurate and more or
less intentional plan of practices […] adopted to achieve a particular social, political,
psychological or linguistic aim.’ (Reisigl/Wodak 2001: 44; see also Buckel et al. 2014:
57). Given my research focus on political struggles in the public sphere, I decided to
dedicate a considerable part of my analysis to the discursive aspects of strategic
repertoires. A useful analytical framework has been developed by Reisigl and Wodak
(2001) who distinguish between four types of discursive strategy: First, ‘referential
strategies’, that is, those practices ‘by which one constructs and represents social actors:
for example, ingroups and outgroups.’ (ibid.: 45). Second, ‘predicational strategies’
which explicitly focus on the normative evaluation of social actors and topics: ‘These
strategies aim either at labelling social actors more or less positively or negatively,

47
For a similar distinction, see Phizacklea/Miles (1980: 15-7).
48
For a more detailed reflection upon this problem of non-transparency in police work, see Hall et al. (2013:
33-40)

60
deprecatorily or appreciatively.’ (ibid.: 45) Third, ‘argumentative strategies’, that is, those
strategies ‘through which positive and negative attributions are justified, through which,
for example, it is suggested that the social and political inclusion or exclusion, the
discrimination or preferential treatment of the respective persons or groups of persons is
justified.’ (ibid.: 45) At the heart of argumentative strategies lie what they call ‘topoi’
which they define as ‘content-related warrants or “conclusion rules” that connect the
argument or arguments with the conclusion, the claim.’ (ibid.: 75) Based on their own
empirical research, Reisigl and Wodak distinguish a wide range of topoi, such as the topos
of threat (‘if there are specific dangers and threats, one should do something against them’
(ibid.: 77)), the topos of burdening (‘if a person, an institution or a ‘country’ is burdened
by specific problems, one should act in order to diminish these burdens.’ (ibid.: 78)), or
the topos of justice (‘if persons/actions/situations are equal in specific respects, they
should be treated/dealt with in the same way.’ (ibid.)). Fourth, ‘mitigation and
intensification strategies’ which ‘are applied to qualify and modify the epistemic status
of a proposition, the degree of certainty, and to modify the speakers’ or writers’
expressiveness as well as the persuasive impact on the hearers and readers’ (ibid.: 81).
Typical forms of mitigating the significance of social phenomena are denial or
relativisation, whereas typical forms of intensification are spotlighting or exaggeration
(ibid.: 83-85; see also Wodak 2015: 58-64). I would like to add two further dimensions
which Reisigl and Wodak discuss in other works. Fifth, explanatory strategies, that is,
attempts to identify the causes of and causal links between given phenomena, or to
interpret the motivation behind a given type of behaviour. According to Reisigl,
explanation is ‘a primarily proposition-related linguistic and cognitive action pattern that
aims at making something comprehensible, and consists in making something clear,
clarifying something, rendering something more precisely or specifying something.’
(Reisigl 2014: 73). Sixth, affective strategies, that is, attempts to appeal to or provoke
certain affective responses among the audience. There are various types of affect
mobilisation that will figure prominently during the empirical chapters, such as strategies
of evoking indignation, outrage, fear, shock, empathy, or sorrow. As Wodak and Reisigl
(2001: 45) highlight, these distinctions are made for analytical purposes. The empirical
analysis of discursive strategies usually reveals that these different dimensions overlap.
This can be illustrated by looking at one discursive strategy that is predominantly
referential but also encompasses other dimensions: the constructions of images.
Following Hall et al., a “public image” is ‘a cluster of impressions, themes and quasi-

61
explanations, gathered or fused together’ (Hall et al. 2013: 118) Thus, while an image
primarily depicts a certain situation or event, it also entails argumentative, explanatory,
normative, and affective assumptions. What makes images specific, however, is that
normative and affective assumptions are predominant, whereas argumentative and
explanatory strategies remain implicit: ‘Since such “public images”, at one and the same
time, are graphically compelling, but also stop short of serious, searching analysis, they
tend to appear in place of analysis […] or analysis seems to collapse into the image’ (ibid.,
emphasis in original). As will be discussed throughout the empirical analysis, this absence
of argumentative coherence and explanatory sophistication makes them particularly
attractive for ideological practices.

As was discussed in the previous chapter, my own approach is informed by the

conceptual distinction between discourse, ideology, and critique (see section 2.1.2). The
underlying argument was that discursive utterances can be distinguished in terms of the
degree to which they provide either a false or an accurate depiction of social reality, and
the degree to which they seek to either reproduce or overcome existing relations of power,
domination, coercion, and violence. Based on Reisigl and Wodak’s multidimensional
framework, this distinction can now be further specified: Referential, argumentative,
explanatory and mitigation/intensification strategies can be considered ideological to the
extent that they provide a distorted, selective, or entirely fictitious image of social reality,
and critical to the extent that they strengthen reality-oriented intellectual reflection
processes; predicational strategies can be considered ideological to the extent that they
provide normative foundations for the justification of relations of domination and
violence, and critical to the extent that they problematise the latter; affective strategies
can be considered ideological to the extent that they mobilise authoritarian, aggressive
and persecutory dispositions, and critical to the extent that they strengthen emancipatory
desires. The concrete task of identifying and evaluating the critical or ideological
character of a given discursive strategy is undoubtedly difficult and requires a high degree
of interpretative, evaluative, and reflexive capacities. It is further complicated by the fact
that many discursive strategies entail both ideological and critical elements. However, the
analytical distinctions discussed in this section make it possible to approach this task in a
more systematic fashion.

62
3.3 Process of Data Collection and Selection

In the following, I will elaborate on the process of data collection and selection which I
have chosen for this research project. I will begin with a general outline of the archival
research which I have conducted as the primary form of data collection (4.1). Second, I
will elaborate on the process of data selection which accompanied my archival research
process and eventually led me to narrow down my research project to a certain time frame,
a certain number of case studies, as well as a certain range of actors and institutions that
will be discussed in the empirical chapters (4.2). Both sections will entail reflections upon
the methodological limitations and challenges which result from my chosen approach.

3.3.1 Data Collection

This research project is primarily based on 2.5 months of fieldwork conducted in various
on-site archives in the UK in the period between early 2018 and late 2020, in conjunction
with a more continuous research process in various online archives as well as the archival
section of the National Library of Scotland between late 2017 and late 2021. In line with
my ambition to take into account the multiplicity of different political actors involved in
debates about and conflicts over racism and violence, I visited both official, activist and
community-based archives. These included the National Archives, the London
Metropolitan Archives, the Black History Collection at the Institute of Race Relations,
the Black Cultural Archives, the George Padmore Institute Archive, and the Bernie Grant
Archive at the Bishopsgate Institute in London; the Black History Collection at the
Central Library in Birmingham; the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre
in Manchester; as well as the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. 49 Furthermore,
I consulted various online archives in order to get access to historical media coverage,
using the services Gale Primary Sources and ProQuest Historical Newspapers, as well as
other online sources such as the British Political Speech Archive.

Preparing, organising, and carrying out archival fieldwork was challenging in

various regards. Although I was in the privileged situation to receive annual fieldwork-
related funding by the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, I was nonetheless

49
The types of documents I collected in these archives include the following: a) published government
reports and press statements, internal correspondence between state officials, internal documents relating
to police investigations, criminal prosecutions, and official inquiries; b) newspaper and magazine articles;
c) independent reports, campaign leaflets and pamphlets, internal documents and correspondence between
campaigners.

63
confronted with strict financial constraints, in particular in light of the high
accommodation costs in London. Furthermore, I was confronted with the problem that
conducting archival research trips and doing research in public libraries has been barely
possible since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic in early 2020. As a result, I was not
able to engage in certain types of research activity, such as the recurrent re-visiting of on-
site archives. Instead, I had to ensure the most effective collection of data within very
short time periods and with limited chances to correct previous mistakes.

One of the greatest challenges of this process of data collection was to find a
balance between explorative and focused research phases. Informed by my initial
literature review at the beginning of my research project, I had some initial ideas about
potential cases to be selected for my empirical analysis. However, these ideas needed to
be checked and adapted throughout the archival research. Most notably, I needed to find
out how much archival data was available for different cases and which cases would be
suitable for an in-depth analysis that offers insights not only in the official-hegemonic but
also the activist-communal responses to it. Luckily, most archives offered some online
insights into their catalogues, which made it possible to prepare the archive visits based
on this information. Nonetheless, there were many moments where I discovered
unexpected documents, or where I examined files that turned out to be much less relevant
than expected.

In addition to these practical difficulties and contingencies, I also had to deal with
various methodological challenges. Most important, of course, were the limitations and
selectivities of the archival collections themselves. To some degree these resulted from
official policies, such as the regulation to close certain files that are officially classified
as “sensitive” for a period of at least one generation. But there is also the much more
complicated issue of unofficial selectivities resulting from the asymmetrical politics of
representation and commemoration in the area of racism and anti-racism. According to
Andrews, for instance, there is a deep-seated problem of ‘archival silence’ (Andrews
2021: 185) regarding marginalised voices and perspectives in the official archival sector.
But, to a lesser degree, one can also identify certain selectivities in established
community-based archives, such as a strong focus on the experiences and struggles of
communities of Afro-Caribbean and South-Asian descent. This has had an impact on my
own process of data collection, in particular the search for potential in-depth case studies.
Nonetheless, as was discussed earlier in this chapter, I decided to combine the case

64
analysis with a broader contextual analysis that would allow to include a wider range of
community-specific experiences of racism and racist violence. Furthermore, I attempted
to visit as many different archives as possible in order to diversify the source material,
and balance out potential selectivities within each archive. Another methodological
challenge that I encountered was that incidents of excessive and deadly violence usually
occurred under highly non-transparent and contentious conditions, oftentimes lacking
sufficient documentation. Thus, although my research was devoted to offering the most
accurate depiction of these incidents and their circumstances, it was nevertheless highly
difficult to achieve this. One way to deal with this challenge was to expand my analytical
focus: I sought to examine not only what actually happened, but also if the conditions at
the time existed to establish what actually happened. For instance, I sought to find out to
what extent governmental, police, judicial or media actors were willing to find out under
which circumstances the individuals in questions had died. This analytical focus was
based on my theoretical argument that the problem of racist violence not only entails the
perpetration of violence itself, but also the unwillingness to tackle and prevent such
violence.

Finally, I would like to reflect upon my decision to exclusively focus on archival

research (in addition to an examination of secondary literature). It would indeed have
been possible to carry out interviews with activists and practitioners as well. This might
have allowed me to explore in greater detail the unofficial, undocumented aspects of the
struggles over racism and violence. What is more, interviewing would have been useful
to strengthen the perspective of publicly underrepresented actors. Eventually, however, I
considered this approach too difficult to realise in a sophisticated manner, in particular
because of my historical focus that goes back three to six decades. Against this
background, I realised that archival research would be more useful and feasible. It needs
to be highlighted that this would not have been possible without the longstanding
activities of community-based archives which played a significant role in keeping the
public voices of those fighting against racism and other forms of hatred alive. In this
sense, carrying out interviews was not necessary to engage with the perspectives of
marginalised actors. Quite the contrary, I found a large number of archival documents
about justice and protest campaigns which demonstrate that the actors involved in these
campaigns were quite capable of raising their voice in the public sphere, and of
intervening in broader political discussions and conflicts. Nevertheless, it would have
been great to make use of the full range of empirical insights and carry out a selected

65
number of interviews in additional to archival research. However, given the extensive
nature of the archival work alone, I realised that it was unfortunately not possible to draw
on both forms of data collection in a sufficient manner within the confines of my four-
year research project.

3.3.2 Data Selection

I have already indicated that one of the most important practical challenges was to narrow
down the empirical scope of my research project without losing sight of its context-
oriented, socio-historical rationale. Throughout the research process, I therefore had to
make tough decisions as to which time frame, which individual cases, and which broader
configuration of actors and institutions will be chosen for closer examination.

Concerning the time frame, I had to take into account pragmatic considerations
about limited personal and financial resources. Although it has been argued that ‘[t]he
period from World War II to the late 1970s was among the most viciously racist periods
in British domestic history’ (Bowling/Phillips 2002: 13), the legacy of racist violence and
victimisation in the British context is indeed much older. Panayi (1996), for instance,
retraces the history of racist hostility and violence against racialised minority
communities at least to the early 19th century. Furthermore, as was discussed in the
introduction, this problem has continued to exist on a massive scale until today. In this
sense, it would have been valuable to examine my object of inquiry on a longue durée
time scale. However, realising that this would be much too ambitious for a PhD-project
limited to four years and 100,000 words, I decided to narrow down the time frame to the
period between the “post-1958 moment” to the “Macpherson moment” in the late 1990s,
which still made it possible to examine the long-term (dis-)continuities of racist violence
and anti-racist mobilisation in modern Britain. It also allowed me to engage with the
question of social and political crisis which, as was hypothesised in the previous chapter,
played a crucial role for the reproduction and politicisation of racist violence in
contemporary Britain.

The selection of cases was based on my overarching rationale to focus on those

cases with a catalytic role in the changing patterns of the politics of (anti-)racism in
contemporary Britain. In order to further specify which cases should be selected based on
this rationale, I produced individual dossiers for each case which I found during the

66
literature review and the archival work. More specifically, I sought to find out to what
extent the respective case was followed by protest dynamics and media discourses. For
instance, those cases which have become the starting point for large-scale public
demonstrations and enduring justice campaigns, and which have received nation-wide
mainstream media attention in the following weeks and months were selected as potential
elements of the in-depth case analysis. At this point, I would like to stress that there was
still a strong pragmatic element to my selection process. There were, in fact, various cases
which I initially planned to explore in greater detail. For instance, there were various
cases which led to significant protest dynamics and communal responses, but have not
received significant mainstream public attention, such as the cases of Tosir Ali (1970)
and Akhtar Ali Baig (1980). Given the highly demanding workload as well as the limited
scope of my PhD thesis, I eventually decided to discuss these cases in the contextual
analysis. Furthermore, there are various cases in the 1980s and 1990s which fit my
selection criteria (such as the cases of Ahmed Iqbal Ullah (1986) or Joy Gardner (1993)),
but which I did not select because my research rationale, informed by an engagement with
gaps and limitations in the existing academic literature, has led me to prioritise others.
There were especially two priorities which informed my final case selection: First, I
identified a close connection between the New Cross, Dorothy Groce and Cynthia Jarrett
cases which I wanted to explore in greater detail in order to make sense of the links
between individual cases and broader campaigning activities. Second, I identified key
research gaps in relation to the political struggles in the aftermath of the Stephen
Lawrence case, which is why I decided to primarily focus on that case in the 1990s. A
more detailed elaboration of my case selection process can be found in Appendix I.

Finally, I had to decide which political actors and institutions should be included in
each case study. Here again, it was not possible for practical reasons to examine each and
every actor that have publicly responded to the respective cases. Against this background,
I decided to focus on an exemplary analysis of actors and institutions that represent the
different state apparatuses and political currents involved in these issues. Depending on
the available archival documents, I sought to engage with the activities and statements of
police agencies, criminal courts, prosecution services, coroner’s offices, race relations
bodies and other public authorities. Given the bipartisan structure of the British party
system, I put a particular emphasis on different political actors and currents affiliated with
the Conservative Party and Labour Party. The Liberal Party and Social-Democratic Party
as well as various regional and other smaller parties are not examined systematically.

67
There are also various associative apparatuses (such as employers’ associations and trade
unions) as well as civil society organisations (such as religions organisations) which
remained in the background of my empirical analysis. In the area of hegemonic media
discourse, I selected various newspapers which are primarily aligned with either the
conservative or social-democratic hegemony project but were also useful in order to
explore left-wing and right-wing variants of liberalism. Furthermore, I attempted to
examine both the tabloid and broadsheet segment of the news market. Against this
background, I selected the Guardian, the Observer, the Daily Mirror, the Times, and the
Daily Mail. I also engaged with a selection of activist periodicals, such as Race & Class,
CARF and Searchlight. My analysis of these newspapers was restricted to news articles,
reportages, editorials, and comments. Discursive texts that I did not examine include
letters to the editor and cartoons. 50

The process of data selection consisted of two steps: In a first step, I produced
dossiers with relevant documents for each case study, but also for the corresponding
context analysis. The most important search criteria for the case analysis were the names
of the victims, of the family campaigns, or of other political actors that emerged from or
were involved in this case. The context analysis required a more complex set of search
terms which was informed by my multidimensional context-oriented rationale. Key
themes that I was looking for were variations of “racist violence”, “racial conflict”, “urban
unrest”, “urban decline”, “decline of Empire”, “economic crisis”, “political crisis”. The
time periods that I focused on were roughly oriented towards key events in questions
(such as the deadly incidents themselves, the police investigation, the criminal procedure,
major protest events etc.), including a period of 12 months before and after these events. 51
In a second step, I carried out a more detailed qualitative analysis of the selected
documents based on the analytical categories introduced in the previous section. During
this process, I realised that the selected amount of data is still manageable, which is why
I carried out this analysis manually.

50
This selection was also informed by pragmatic decisions resulting from limited accessibility. For
instance, various mainstream (e.g., The Sun) and activist/minority newspapers (e.g. The Voice) are only
available at the British Library in London. Given my financial and time constraints, I was not able to include
these in the analysis.
51
Occasionally, I also extended this time frame to get a broader historical overview (see for example my
analysis of the discourse about “no-go areas” analysed in chapter 6).

68
3.4 Ethical-Political Remarks

My exclusive focus on publicly accessible archives that do not involve human participants
did not require ethical approval. Nonetheless, there are various ethical-political problems
and challenges that I had to reflect upon throughout my research process. First of all, I
have engaged with a highly sensitive topic that has caused unimaginable suffering to those
affected. Unsurprisingly, the underlying normative motivation of my research project was
to make a contribution to the intellectual critique and practical abolition of the social and
political conditions that make racist and other forms of violence and oppression
possible. 52 The specific mode in which I sought to achieve this aim, however, was
analytical rather than normative: The main task was not to demonstrate that such violence
is morally reprehensible – which to me is obvious –, but to illuminate the specific ways
in which it has been reproduced and opposed. However, this analytical rationale does not
come without ethical difficulties. For, in order to shed light on broader social patterns and
historical trajectories, it became necessary to abstract from many concrete experiences of
injury, loss, and trauma. While an accurate depiction of incidents of racist violence can
give an impression of what Hartman calls ‘the world-destroying capacities of pain’
(Hartman 1997: 3), it can never fully grasp them. This is undoubtedly a limitation of my
research project. In order to counteract this problematic, I nonetheless attempted to
foreground throughout my presentation of empirical results that bereaved families and
friends as well as support actors have always attempted to express and share these
experiences as part of their political struggles.

A second issues that I had to reflect upon is how my own positionality as a white,
European, male academic researcher, as well as my work within academic and archival
institutions characterised by every day and institutional legacies and cultures of racism
has affected my research project (Bhambra et al. 2018; Johnston 2001; Mullen/Newman
2018; Pilkington 2011; Sian 2019; Virdee et al. 2021). 53 A particular issue that I had to
deal with is the problem of what Lentin calls ‘the paternalist solidarity of so-called “white
left” anti-racism’ (Lentin 2004: 11), that is, the attempt by white left-wing actors to
express solidarity with those affected by and fighting against racism which nonetheless
reproduces selectivities and hierarchies in the area of political organisation and/or
knowledge production. Against this background, I attempted to organise the research

52
See the definition of critique in the previous chapter.
53
For a recent online petition, written by various archivists and signed by around 1,700 people, that calls
to ‘End Structural Racism in Britain's Archives Sector’, see UK Archivists (2019).

69
project in a way that foregrounds the political perspectives and activities of bereaved
families and friends as well as racialised minority organisations and campaigns. One
aspect that became quite clear from the beginning was that this practice of foregrounding
should not be misconceived as what is commonly known as “given these actors a voice”,
which remains to be based on the passivising and marginalising assumption that these
actors actually did not have a voice in public. 54 Although these actors were indeed
confronted with a fine-meshed network of institutional selectivities, it is striking with
how much dignity, courage and perseverance they withstood these selectivities and made
a significant contribution to shifting the wider public debate about racism in modern
British history. It goes without saying that taking seriously minority perspectives does not
mean to falsely romanticise and homogenise them, but also requires an analysis of internal
differences, tensions, and conflicts. I hope that the way I have carried out my research
appropriately takes up these considerations. The reader will have to decide whether or not
this has worked.

3.5 Conclusion

I have now developed a theoretical and analytical framework to examine the changing
patterns of political struggles over racism and violence in recent British history through
the lens of various political conflicts that had emerged in the aftermath of the deaths of
Black and Asian individuals. More specifically, I have distinguished between different
analytical levels that will guide my presentation of empirical results: On a situational and
episodical level, I will examine the emergence of justice campaigns and political protests
in the aftermath various cases of deadly violence as well as their relation to a broader
configuration of political actors which have directly responded to these cases. This will
include not only other minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional actors, but also
the hegemonic political centre as well as the far right. The analysis of discursive strategies
and ideological mechanisms will play an important role on this level. On an institutional
and periodical level, I will analyse how these case-specific protest and conflict dynamics
related to and resonated with broader political relations of forces in the area of
policymaking, political representation, criminal prosecution, and news coverage. The
analysis of institutional selectivities will be useful in order to examine the power effects

54
For a critique of the phrase “giving voice to the voiceless” as a patronizing act, see Kretz (2021)

70
of such institutional terrains. On a societal and conjunctural level, I will put these conflict
dynamics in the context of long-term socio-economic and political-ideological
transformations of British society in the second half of the 20th century. Three overlapping
processes will figure prominently in this context: the economic crisis of the early 1970s
which continued to have a longstanding political impact in the 1980s and 1990s; the
decline of the British Empire; and the legitimation crisis of British traditionalism in the
post-1968 period. Bringing these different levels of analysis together, each of the
following chapters will focus on four different periods between the 1950s and 1990s, with
a selection of case studies at the centre of each chapter.

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4. The political conflicts over racist violence between the early 1950s and mid-
1960s

In this chapter, I will retrace and re-examine the historical emergence of violent racism
both as a social reality and as an object of public debate and political conflict in the
immediate British post-war peiod. While most experiences of racist violence had been
met with an official and hegemonic culture of ignorance and indifference, it was
especially two confrontational episodes in the late 1950s that elevated the issues of “race”,
immigration, and discrimination to the stage of national politics and mass media
discourse: the racist riots in West London and Nottingham in August and September 1958
as well as the racist murder of Kelso Cochrane in Notting Hill in May 1959. Based on a
critical review of authoritative accounts of British post-war history as well as an
examination of original archival documents, I will examine the major political responses
to these events and assess to what extent and in which ways they represent what Solomos
calls a ‘turning point’ (Solomos 1988: 59) in the history of the politics of (anti-)racism.
Beginning with a reconsideration of the wider post-war conjuncture with an explicit focus
on the constellation of post-WWII economic reconstruction, (post-)colonialism, (neo-
)fascism, nationalism, and racism (4.1), I will then move on to analyse the political
circumstances and repercussions of the racist riots in 1958 as well as the racist murder of
Kelso Cochrane in 1959 (4.2). A conclusion will bring together both parts of the analysis
and prepare the ground for the following chapters (4.3).

4.1 Context analysis: The political conflicts over racism in the period of imperial
decline and the “post-war settlement”

In the literature on 20th century history in Europe and North America it has become
common sense to characterise the period between the late 1940s and mid-to-late 1960s as
an unprecedented moment of socio-economic prosperity and political-ideological
stability. In one of the most influential periodisations of the “short 20th century”,
Hobsbawm refers to this time period as a “Golden Age” characterised by economic
growth, increasing living standards, extended welfare provisions, technological
innovation, and (geo-)political stability (Hobsbawm 1995: 257-286). This
characterisation of the first post-war decades has also become a common explanatory
framework in order to make sense of the racialisation of the political landscape in Britain
and other (post-)colonial societies. The most influential example is the collaborative work

72
“Policing the Crisis” (Hall et al. 2013) which analyses the first three decades of British
post-war history as the succession of a ‘post-war hegemony’ (ibid.: 227) and a ‘profound
crisis in the exercise of hegemony’ (ibid.: 260) by the late 1960s and early 1970s. 55
Exclusively highlighting the moments of prosperity and stability, however, runs the risk
of losing sight of various counter-tendencies which need to be taken into consideration in
order to make sense of key dynamics in the area of politics and discourse. Most notably,
it has been argued that the macro-economic growth during the post-war years was
overshadowed not only by the negative socio-economic effects of Britain’s involvement
in the Second World War, but also by a long-term process of industrial decline which
resulted from the growing importance of service and other productive sectors as well as
from shifting relations of global competition (Phizacklea/Miles 1980: 47-49). According
to Alexander Gallas, this process was especially strong in the British context compared
to other Western/European nation-states (Gallas 2015: 76; see also Jessop 1991: 137).
One result of this process of deindustrialisation which had already become manifest by
the early 1960s was the structural decline of industrial conurbations which began to
impact on the living and working conditions of their working-class populations
(Phizacklea/Miles 1980: 49-68). What is more, it needs to be stressed that the “Golden
Years” have been characterised by the partial limitation but not the substantial prevention
of socio-economic inequality, poverty and precarity. In his critique of the post-war
“affluent society”, Marcuse, for instance, argues that its ‘supreme promise’ of an ‘an ever-
more-comfortable life for an ever-growing number of people’ (Marcuse 1991: 23) was
accompanied by ‘the inhuman existence of those who form the human base of the social
pyramid […].’ (ibid.: 53) It is also at the (geo-)political level that the “post-war
settlement” thesis needs to be qualified. Indeed, the immediate post-war period appears
not such much as a ‘tranquil, if not somnolent’ historical moment (Hobsbawm 1995: 284)
if one goes beyond a confined British or European perspective. Most notably, it was in
this period that a multiplicity of longstanding and globally connected anti-colonial
independence movements succeeded in resisting and defeating British and European
colonial rule (Burton 2015; Gopal 2019; Gott 2012). Furthermore, this perspective is
important in order take into account that the post-war settlement was not simply an
endogenous achievement of the capitalist societies of the global north, but was entangled
within the shifting geo-political relations following the Second World War and in the

55
For a concise summary of this argument, see the preface to the second edition (Hall et al. 2013: xv-xviii).

73
context of decolonisation. 56 In the British context, for example, a key foundation of the
post-war boom was the growing influx of labour migrants from the (former) British
colonies, especially from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent. As Sivanandan puts
it: ‘The labour that Britain drew from Asia and the Caribbean helped first to bind its
wounds of war and then set it on the road to recovery. Black workers […] were the aid,
the Marshall Plan, on which Britain’s immediate post-war prosperity was founded.’
(1981: i) Despite these massive contributions, however, (post-)colonial migrants and
citizens were largely excluded from the main economic and political advancements of the
“Golden Age”. ‘And yet’, Sivanandan continues, ‘they themselves were kept from that
prosperity, from a stake in that society and, by virtue of the work and housing afforded
them, the virtue of their colour, condemned to live midst the detritus of inner cities’
(ibid.). It is important to take account of these socio-economic and geo-political
countertendencies in order to make sense of the rearticulation of racism in the political
landscape. It is to this analytic level that I will now turn.

4.1.1 Hegemonic politics and media discourse

For various authors, the most important dynamic in British post-war politics was the
emergence and consolidation of a triangular regime of collective bargaining between
government, organised capital and organised labour which played an important role in
the institutional containment and stabilisation of class-based conflicts by offering
traditionally excluded working-class sections limited material concessions and symbolic
forms of integration (Glyn et al. 1990: 57; Hall et al. 2013: 223-35; Hobsbawm 1995:
282). Other authors point to similar tendencies in other areas such as the post-war system
of criminal justice which, following Garland/Sparks, was characterised by technocratic
approaches echoing ‘modernist, welfare-oriented social democracy’ (Garland/Sparks
2000: 195) These integrationist forms of collective bargaining and state control were
accompanied, on an ideological level, by a strong tendency towards consensualist
ideologies, with the Labour Party advocating the redistributive ideology of “social
partnership” and the Conservative Party focusing on the consumerist ideology of the
“affluent society” (Black/Pemberton 2004). While during the late 1940s and early 1950s
there was still a stronger emphasis on the enduring hardship and scarcity resulting from

56
As Robinson observes, ‘[t]here has never been a moment in modern European history (before) that
migratory and/or immigrant labor was not a significant aspect of European economies’ (Robinson 2000:
23).

74
the Second World War, there was a gradual change throughout the 1950s in the direction
of more optimistic visions. Most famous in this regard was a public speech by
Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that included the claim that ‘most of our
people have never had it so good’ (as cited in Ratcliffe 2016). That there was a strong
focus across the hegemonic political landscape on notions of social stability and harmony
has been interpreted as the indication of what Marcuse calls the ‘unification or
convergence of opposites’ (Marcuse 1991: 19), that is, a political landscape devoid of
significant conflict dynamics. Other authors, however, object to this emphasis on
consensus and stability (Marlow 1996; Kerr 2001; Todd 2014). In the 1950s and 1960s,
for instance, it can be argued that the question of social, political, and cultural
liberalisation became a highly contentious issue during the 1960s. It was not until the
Labour Party took over government in 1964 that at least some liberal forms in the areas
of criminal justice, capital punishment, sexual orientation, abortion, divorce and – as we
will see further below – anti-discrimination were implemented (Donelly 2005: 104-123).
What is more, it was as early as the 1950s that the overarching hegemonic discourse about
affluence was accompanied by an embryonic crisis discourse about urban working-class
areas. Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, the problem of “slum areas” and the agenda
of “slum clearance” became a prevalent subject of public debate and policymaking. For
instance, it became a repeated subject of parliamentary debates (see for example HC Deb
06/11/50: 606-713; 27/03/56: 2161-2193; 18/03/57: 49-136) and led to various legislative
initiatives such as the Housing Repairs and Rents Act 1954, the Housing Act 1957, or the
Rent Act 1957. In its 1951 general election manifesto, the Conservative Party claimed
that ‘Work, family life, health and education are all undermined by overcrowded homes.
[…] In a property-owning democracy, the more people who own their homes the better’
(Conservative Party 1951). 57 In its 1955 manifesto, it declared its intention to ‘fight with
vigour the war on the slums’ (Conservative Party 1955). The Labour Party, too, pledged
in its manifestos to ‘move forward until every family has its own separate home, and until
every slum is gone’ (Labour Party 1950) and ‘to press on with slum clearance’ (Labour
Party 1959). Such publicly expressed anxieties about the destabilising impact of “slum
areas” was also echoed in mainstream media discourse (see for example Manchester
Guardian 58 22/05/51, 04/11/53, 20/01/54; Observer 19/02/50; Times 22/05/51, 04/11/53,
30/04/55, Daily Mail 22/05/51, 17/01/55; Daily Mirror 19/10/51, 28/07/54). There were

57
For an examination of the Conservative policy of “slum clearance” in the 1950s and 1960s, see Jones
(2010).
58
The newspaper was renamed “the Guardian” in 1959.

75
only some voices that rejected such an urban crisis diagnosis (see for example Daily
Mirror 07/09/51). What this demonstrates is that even in a historical period of relative
macro-economic growth and stability the wider public discourse was characterised by
certain ambivalences and anxieties about urban spaces as symbols or harbingers of future
socio-economic decline.

Another dynamic that is usually not discussed in the “post-war settlement thesis” is
that there was a growing concern in official and hegemonic discourse about the future of
national identity following the decline of the British Empire (Miles/Phizacklea 1984: 45-
78; Waters 1997: 210-17; Virdee 2014: 100-104). In conservative discourse, there was a
shift throughout the 1950s from euphoric portrayals of the British Empire and
Commonwealth as ‘the greatest force for peace and progress in the world today’
(Conservative Party 1955) and ‘the most fascinating and successful experiment in
government and in international relations ever known’ (ibid.), to more restrained and
defensive promises ‘to work out in the Commonwealth the pattern of a community of free
and sovereign nations’ (Conservative Party 1959) and to fight against ‘misrepresentation
about British “colonialism”’ (ibid.) Unlike the Conservative Party which was attacked for
its ‘Victorian imperialism and colonial exploitation’ (Labour Party 1951), the Labour
Party prided itself of having transformed ‘the British Empire into a Commonwealth of
free and equal peoples’ (Labour Party 1955). However, in addition to the denial of the
legacy of social-democratic imperialism, the Labour Party remained cautious to stress
Britain’s ongoing dominance as ‘the heart of a great Commonwealth extending far
beyond the boundaries of Europe’ (Labour Party 1950) that has the ‘responsibility to
protect the weaker peoples from being exploited, and to develop communities free from
racial and colour discrimination’ (Labour Party 1955). It was also not uncommon to
explicitly put the urgency of “slum clearance” and other socio-economic policies in the
context of Britain’s loss of imperial geo-political power. In a speech to the 1950 Annual
Conference of the Conservative Party, for instance, Churchill discussed economic
recovery as an important part of making ‘Britain and the British Empire once again great
and free’ (as cited in Times 16/10/50). Similar evocations can also be found among
liberal-reformist commentators. In an Observer reportage on the 1950 election campaign,
for instance, the author gives a favourable portrayal of Hampstead, an upper-class London
area, which seeks to invoke feelings of colonial nostalgia: ‘Here, in the climb from Swiss
Cottage, one can see what Kipling meant to our fathers, how he inflamed their minds.
They came back to eat curry, to hang up their assegais and ivories over the mantelpiece,

76
and to build these fabulous houses […].’ (Observer 19/02/50) At the same time, the author
indicates that this legacy begins to erode in light of growing ‘smudges of slum’ (ibid.)
and the transformation of those time-honoured buildings into ‘boarding houses, schools,
flats’ (ibid.). It was within this context of (post-)colonial nationalism that the
rearticulation of racism by the mid-20th century needs to be situated. In post-war Britain,
it was primarily expressed through the racialisation of immigration. The labour shortage
of the post-war years indeed led to a short period during which the influx of (post-
)colonial migrants was officially accepted under the regulations of the 1948 British
Nationality Act. At the same time, however, this period also showed a strong tendency
both within the major political parties and at the right-wing margins of the political
spectrum to oppose the arrival of people from the (former) non-European colonies (Fryer
2010: 381-86; Miles and Phizacklea 1984: 25-33; Virdee 2014: 103-4). In his analysis of
hegemonic political responses to post-war immigration, Solomos shows that restrictive
positions were already prevalent in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Solomos 1988: 29-41,
54-62). Furthermore, he argues that, while these positions were especially influential
within the Conservative Party, there was also a small yet growing restrictionist faction at
the backbenches and in the lower ranks of the Labour Party (ibid.: 32). The racist
character of these debates and initiatives was evident from the prominent role of the
pejorative racialised signifier “coloured” in the referential strategies deployed during
these debates, as well as from the fact that this hostile discourse was not extended to
labour migrants from within Europe. Solomos concludes that ‘by the early 1950s the
ideology that “too many” black immigrants were a potential “problem” had already
become institutionalised’ (ibid.: 33). Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that this
burgeoning elite discourse strongly resonated within the wider population. According to
an empirical study from 1955, for example, two thirds of the British population held racist
views, with one third being ‘deeply prejudiced’ (Richmond 1955, as cited in Fryer 2010:
374). Furthermore, Ramdin (1987: 227-28) quotes two opinion polls from the late 1950s
and early 1960s according to which 75% and 67% of those questioned were in favour of
stronger restrictions to Black immigration. In party political and mass media debates,
these hostilities were expressed through a variety of discursive strategies. One strategy
was the construction of Black masculinity as well as “multi-racial” sexual relations as
threats to the “racial purity” and “cultural integrity” of the British nation. According to
various authors, these gendered and racialised anxieties were usually expressed by
evoking images of white female victimhood and endangered British family values

77
(Lawrence 1982: 68-71; Gilroy 1987: 79-85; Solomos 1988: 32). Another strategy was
to associate racialised minority communities with socio-economic problems such as
pressures on labour markets and welfare services, overcrowded housing, as well as a
wider process of urban decay (Gilroy 1987: 96-104; Solomos 1988: 32-6). This can be
exemplified by taking a closer look at the racialisation of the above-discussed “slum
discourse”. While the ideological association of “slums” with the presence of migrants
from the (former) colonies was still rudimentary throughout the 1950s, there is evidence
to suggest that it already existed as a tendency within the wider “slum discourse”. In a
parliamentary debate from 22 November 1957, for instance, the Conservative
Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government J.R. Bevin
discusses the arrival of labour migrants from the (former) colonies in London in the
following ambivalent way: ‘Some fail to adapt themselves to conditions here, both
socially and from the point of view of employment. On the other hand, others are very
successful in adapting themselves to the conditions that exist here. It is a fact, however,
that a problem exists, and it is a difficult one.’ (HC Deb 22/11/57: 773). Various right-
wing Conservative backbenchers went a step further by constructing the presence of
(post-)colonial migrants not only as a burden, but also as a threat. In a parliamentary
session from 15 July 1958, for instance, John Cordeaux, MP for Nottingham Central,
warned against the alleged ‘exploitation of our own people by coloured people who come
to this country with the sole object of buying slum property and charging extortionate
rents’ (HC Deb 15/07/58: 994). Given the actual dynamics of racist discrimination on the
housing and rental market discussed in the next paragraph, this can clearly be identified
as a strategy of victim-perpetrator reversal. Such a problematisation can also be found
within the social-democratic hegemony project. In the just mentioned debate from 22
November 1957, Marcus Lipton, Labour MP for Brixton, discusses certain strategies by
real estate firms which he expects will have the effect ‘that there will be coloured slums
in Brixton’ (HC Deb 22/11/57: 770). Although it remains unclear which measures and
policies Lipton considered appropriate in order to respond to this development, he clearly
characterised it as ‘a great and growing problem, particularly in London’ (ibid.) and
associated it with the immigration flows which were ‘adding to the pressure in certain
specified areas’ (ibid.: 771) In a parliamentary debate from 30 July 1958, Walter
Edwards, MP for Stepney, framed the settlement of Black and Asian people in urban areas
as a negative development for white residents:

78
 I could give the House dozens of examples of property in the Borough of Stepney
which has been bought by coloured people, and which, within a very short time, has
been occupied entirely by coloured people. They have to live somewhere, it is true,
but the plain fact of the matter is that the white people in Stepney are finding it very
difficult indeed to get the accommodation they require. (30/07/58: 1511)

This hostile political and everyday climate had dramatic effects on the material
living and working conditions of racialised minorities in a wide range of areas such as
employment, housing, welfare, education, health, and political representation. In the area
of employment, for instance, Black and Asian people were affected by what various
authors have called a process of (sub-)proletarianisation, that is, their insertion into semi-
or unskilled segments of the productive and service sector that were being vacated by
white workers who increasingly made use of limited opportunities of upward mobility
(e.g. manufacturing, public transport, hospitality, catering, nursing or cleaning) (see
Phizacklea/Miles 1980: 20; Sivanandan 2008: 90; Virdee 2014: 111-2). Another
structural effect of this racialised stratification of work relations was a spatial
concentration of racialised minority communities in urban working-class areas
characterised by bad housing and living conditions. Thus, in exact contrast to the above-
discussed growing influence of racialised “slum discourses”, it was racist hostility and
marginalisation that forced (post-)colonial migrants and citizens into poor urban areas.
As Ramdin argues: Black people ‘came to be seen as a cause for the decline in these areas,
rather than what in fact they were: the victims of it.’ (Ramdin 1987: 246). While this
structural discrimination was a shared experience among Black and Asian communities,
it was also articulated with a greater variety of power imbalances both within these
communities and the wider British society. For instance, Black and Asian women were
affected by the combined effects of both racist and patriarchal hierarchies which, in
addition to the extra burden of unpaid domestic and care work, forced them into the most
precarious job segments and confronted them with a disproportionally high risk of
unemployment (Bryan et al. 2018: 17-33; Parmar 1982: 245-256; CARF/Southall Rights
1981: 17-22).

Overall, then, it was already in late 1940s and 1950s that racialised minorities were
confronted with discriminatory discourses, institutional selectivities and everyday
hostilities which amounted to a persistent regime of racist marginalisation. While the
specific macro-economic conditions and relations of force of the mid-20th century further
consolidated the overall process of both symbolic and material working-class integration
79
into the British national project, the majority of Black and Asian people, despite their
British citizenship status, were excluded from such opportunities. In this sense, the key
parameters of the post-war settlement do not apply to their particular every day and
political experience. It is against this background that Virdee characterises ‘[t]he golden
age of welfare capitalism and social democratic settlement’ also as the ‘golden age of
white supremacy’ (Virdee 2014: 99). In this period that there was a rudimentary yet
growing tendency to problematise and stigmatise racialised minorities as an unwelcome
burden on limited welfare services, job opportunities and scarce residential space. What
this indicates is that even within a period characterised by the relative absence of overall
socio-economic crisis tendencies, there was an underlying reservoir of discontent with
precarious and unequal material living conditions which became the socio-psychological
“raw material” for racist ideological displacements, in particular the technique of blaming
racialised others for structural problems which they did not cause and by which they were
affected most fundamentally. It will be demonstrated in the second half of this chapter
that the racist riots in Notting Hill and Nottingham as well as the murder of Kelso
Cochrane in 1959 had a profound impact on this racialisation of the notion of ‘urban
crisis’.

4.1.2 Far-right oppositional politics

The period between the late 1940s and early 1960s saw various attempts to challenge the
hegemonic political landscape from the far right. After fascist political forces had been
largely banned during the Second World War, they immediately began to re-organise in
the following years. The most important groups and organisations that were formed in
this period were Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement (founded in 1948), the League of
Empire Loyalists (1954), the National Labour Party (1957), the White Defence League
(1958), the British National Party (1960), or the National Socialist Movement (1962).
Looking at the ideological core of all these organisations, there continued to be a clear
commitment to fascism and Nazism and thus a fundamental rejection of bourgeois-
democratic principles of political representation and hegemony. One new development,
however, was that some of these organisations attempted to adapt to the changed political
context. During the 1950s, for instance, there were first attempts to gain public influence
through local electoral campaigns (Copsey 2000: 102-04). By the late 1960s, however,
these political strategies had remained limited in the sense that British post-war neo-

80
fascism and neo-Nazism had been unable to establish itself as a significant oppositional
force. Following Daniel Jones and Paul Jackson, most of these attempts never went
beyond the status of small ‘groupuscules’ characterised by a low degree of durability and
marginal public impact (Jones/Jackson 2017: 27-30). In the literature, this has been
attributed not only to incompetent political leadership and internal conflicts, but also to
the “anti-fascist” underpinnings of British post-war nationalism that established a certain
taboo over these political milieus, to the existence of anti-fascist and anti-racist
campaigns, and to the fact that who wanted to express and support racism it was not
necessary to search outside of the hegemonic political landscape (Copsey 2000: 102-9;
Jones/Jackson 27-30; Miles/Phizacklea 1984: 120). Nevertheless, these small groups and
organisations played a key role not only in the actual perpetration of, but also the public
incitement to violence against minorities (Copsey 2000: 86-7, 95-7; Silver 2006; Virdee
2014: 108-9). As will be discussed in the second half of this chapter, they also followed
a strategy of territorial confrontation and intimidation which prioritised exactly those
urban working-class areas that had already become the subject of broader racialised crisis
discourses.

4.1.3 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional politics

Although the official and hegemonic public responses to neo-fascism and neo-Nazism
were largely condemnatory, the attempts to protect racialised minority communities from
this threat had remained half-hearted at best. What is more, as was discussed earlier, these
communities were confronted with widespread racist hostilities and selectivities in the
area of mainstream politics and media discourse. It was in this political climate that the
longstanding and complex process of minority self-organisation and coalition-building in
the second half of the 20th century began. Until the late 1950s and early 1960s, however,
many of these attempts remained rudimentary. Furthermore, as Shukra argues, many of
these organisations did not explicitly cooperate with each other because they were
separated by ‘ethnic lines stressing differences in religion, culture and language’ (1998:
9). But these first impulses existed and paved the way for later organisational and
mobilisational activities. According to Sivanandan, for instance, there were numerous ‘ad
hoc responses’ (Sivanandan 2008: 92) in the areas of housing, education, work, cultural
and public life (ibid.: 90-94). Furthermore, there were first attempts to form political
organisations such as a West Indian Association in Merseyside, Liverpool (1953) and

81
Indian Workers’ Associations in Coventry (1953) and Southall, London (1957)
(CARF/Southall Rights 1981: 10; Shukra 1998: 17; Sivanandan 2008: 93). Furthermore,
Jewish organisations contributed to the fight against racism, antisemitism, and fascism in
the immediate post-war period. This included not only politically moderate organisations
such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews (Copsey 2000: 99-100), but also a distinct
strand of militant anti-fascism. Particularly relevant was the formation of the so-called 43
Group in West Hampstead, London (1946), an association of former Jewish soldiers who,
in response to the lack of state response to the growing danger of neo-fascism and neo-
Nazism, decided to contain this danger themselves (Copsey 2000: 83-4; Sonabend 2019).
Its main strategies were physical confrontation and public mobilisation, including the
organisation of an anti-fascist protest rally against a meeting of the Union Movement at
Kensington Town Hall with 3,000 participants in 1949 (Copsey 2000: 100) As will be
discussed in the next chapters, these early confrontational approaches had become an
important source of inspiration during later moments of anti-racist and anti-fascist politics
in the 1970s and 1980s.

4.2 Case study: The political conflicts over the West London and Nottingham
racist riots and the murder of Kelso Cochrane in Notting Hill, 1958-1959

It is within this context that the racist riots in West London and Nottingham in August
and September 1958 as well as the murder of Kelso Cochrane in May 1959 occurred.
While large-scale rioting and small-scale street attacks have regularly occurred in the
previous years, it was the first time that the murder of an individual in the UK was
reported and connected to the issue of “race” and racism. Furthermore, while previous
incidents and patterns have received some public attention, the riots and the murder
immediately triggered extensive political debates and mainstream media coverage.
Although these episodes, especially the riots, are discussed in most studies on the history
of racialised minorities as well as the politics of (anti-)racism in contemporary Britain,
this tends to be done in an anecdotal, descriptive manner (see for example Fryer 2010:
376-81; Olusoga 2016: 509-11). 59 Furthermore, among those accounts that provide a
stronger analytical perspective, there does not exist a consensus on the meaning and
significance of these episodes. On the one hand, there are various authors who argue that
the impact of these events on the racialisation of British politics was rather limited. An

59
For two journalistic contributions, see Pilkington (1988) and Olden (2011).

82
influential example is the collaborative work “Policing the Crisis” (Hall et al. 2013)
whose authors argue that the racialisation of contemporary British politics was less a
phenomenon of the “post-war settlement” than of the following period since the late
1960s which, in their view, was characterised by a growing crisis of political hegemony
(ibid.: 215-317). 60 Although they acknowledge that these episodes were ‘overtly about
“race”’ (ibid.: 158), they conclude that ‘it is clear that these events also served as a focus
of social anxiety, touching many sources by no means all of which were, in any specific
sense, racial’ (ibid.) That they devote only three pages to the 1958 racist riots (and do not
mention the Cochrane case) within a 400-page strong analysis of the first three post-war
decades indicates that they do not consider them a catalytic moment in the racialisation
of British politics (ibid.: 158-61). Another example is Gilroy’s (1987) seminal work on
racism, politics and culture in post-war Britain which, too, puts a strong emphasis on the
historical period since the mid-1960s, asserting for example ‘that the word “immigrant”
became synonymous with the word “black” in the 1970s’ (ibid.: 46, emphasis added) and
pointing to ‘the existence of street level harassment and other activity by extreme racist
groups including the British Ku Klux Clan as early as 1965’ (ibid.: 152, emphasis added).
In line with this periodisation, he argues that in the public discussions following the 1958
racist riots, ‘a racial response was not a dominant one’ (ibid.: 98). This is echoed in
Gilroy’s more recent work which is based on a historical account of violent racism which
only begins during the mid- to late 1960s (Gilroy 2004: 111). The 1958 riots or the
Cochrane case, on the other hand, are not explicitly brought up in his reflection on the
connection between postcolonial melancholia and racist aggression. Other authors, on the
other hand, characterise the riots as a formative moment in the reconfiguration of British
politics and state policy (Miles 1984; Miles/Phizacklea 1984; Ramdin 1987: 204-231;
Solomos 1988) In his historical sociology of the formation of a Black working class in
England, Ramdin asserts that ‘at the heart of the matter was “the colour problem”’
(Ramdin 1987: 209). Furthermore, Silver characterises the murder of Kelso Cochrane as
‘one of the most significant moments in the history of racism in Britain.’ (Silver 2006)

What all these accounts have in common is a lack of a theoretically informed explanatory
perspective. Regarding the first tendency, this is unsurprising as there did not seem to be
much of significance to explain. But the second tendency, too, only offers rudimentary

60
We will see in the next chapter that their crisis-analytical approach is indeed useful in order to make
sense of the changing political landscape since the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, their strong
emphasis on this latter period leads them to lose sight of the previous two decades in general and the
sequence of racist violence in the late 1950s in particular.

83
insights into the social and political conditions of existence of these two moments of
collective and deadly violence. In his analysis of post-1958 racism, for instance, Miles
indicates that ‘that the material precondition for the operation of this ideological process
was the increasing level of unemployment amongst West Indian migrants’ (Miles 1984:
271) but does not further explore this context dimension. Thus, it is not only the need to
revisit these conflicting interpretations, but also the need to provide a more systematic
explanatory approach which has led me to decide that a reconsideration of the 1958 racist
riots as well as the murder of Cochrane is necessary. At the centre of this discussion will
be the complex relation between notions of “postcolonial identity crisis” and “urban
crisis” in public discourses which has already been discussed in the previous section.

4.2.1 The 1958 racist riots and the murder of Kelso Cochrane in the context of
racist violence in the 1950s and 1960s

The period between the late 1940s and early 1960s was characterised by a consistent
pattern of both every day and organised, small- and large-scale acts of physical violence
against racialised minority individuals and communities. Although historical research on
violent racism in the first post-war years is fragmentary, there have been some efforts to
evaluate the extent of racist attacks in this period (Fryer 2010: 372-86; Bowling 1998:
29-34, 36-37). In his detailed study on this history of violent racism in Britain, Bowling,
for instance, states that ‘[s]poradic attacks on Black people and their homes were reported
during the 1950s in Nottingham, Dudley, and London’ (Bowling 1998: 30). Sivanandan
even reports that in the 1950s ‘[r]acial attacks became a regular part of immigrant life in
Britain’ (Sivanandan 2008: 97). He also mentions various shooting incidents during
which Black and Asian people were injured, as well as the murder of a Black person in
1965 (ibid.: 106) There was also a series of arson attacks on 16 synagogues in London
and elsewhere as well as on a Jewish school in Manchester during the mid-to-late 1960s
(Copsey 2000: 110; Endelman 2002: 246; Julius 2010: 337; Kushner 2012: 444). In 1966,
four members of the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Movement were convicted for
seven of these arson attacks. However, they were only sentenced to two days of jail which
led to strong criticism by Jewish organisations such as the Board of Deputies of British
Jews and the Polish-Jewish Ex-Servicemen’s Association (TNA DPP 2/4078; Guardian
16/04/66, 18/04/66; Times 18/04/66). At various moments in the post-war period, this
everyday culture of racist violence was accompanied by episodes of collective violence

84
throughout Britain. For instance, racist riots took place in Birmingham (May 1948),
Liverpool (August 1948), Deptford/London (July 1949), Camden/London (1954), Dudley
and Smethwick (1962), Accrington and Leeds (1964) and Wolverhampton (1965)
(Sivanandan 2008: 97; Fryer 2010: 367-71; Bowling 1998: 29-30, 36). In 1946 and 1947,
there were also antisemitic riots in London, Liverpool, and Manchester (Endelman 2002:
232-34; Julius 2010: 331-35). It is difficult to reconstruct in detail to what extent these
riots were spontaneous or organised forms of political violence. What should not be
underestimated is the above-discussed process of far-right (re-)organisation. According
to internal police documents, for instance, neo-fascist groups such as the National Labour
Party and the White Defence League organised leaflet and newspaper campaigns
specifically targeting the Notting Hill area (see TNA HO 325/9). Furthermore, the White
Defence League pursued a clear strategy of capitalising on the Notting Hill riots by
relocating their headquarters to the area in the immediate aftermath of the riots (Daily
Mail 30/03/59). 61 However, given that their followership and public impact was still
relatively small in that period, it is more likely that that their main role was that of an
escalating force within an already existing everyday culture of racist and antisemitic
violence.

It is within this context of racist, antisemitic, and neo-fascist violence that the racist
riots in London and Nottingham in August and September 1958 need to be situated. There
is also evidence to suggest that this broader pattern had already been centred on those
urban areas. Fryer, for example, argues that ‘racist attacks were by 1958 a commonplace
of black life in London’ (Fryer 2010: 378). Ramdin adds that in the two months preceding
the riots in West London, there had already been ‘many attacks by gangs of white youths
on black people’ (Ramdin 1987: 206), and also discusses examples of neo-fascist
agitation in Notting Hill and other areas throughout the 1950s (ibid.: 216-19). The scope
and intensity of the 1958 riots was nonetheless unprecedented. Over a period of several
days, large crowds of several thousand white people took the streets, shouted racist
slogans and death threats, and attacked Black residents and their property with iron bars,
knifes, guns and petrol bombs. While the London riots started in and were focused on the
Notting Hill area, they also spread out to other areas such as Southall, Hornsey, Islington,
Hackney, and Stepney (Bowling 1998: 31). According to Bowling (1998: 30-31), the
perpetrators primarily consisted of working-class youths associated with the “Teddy Boy”

61
As will be discussed in the following chapters, this would become a consistent strategy of neo-fascist
mobilisation throughout the following decades.

85
sub-culture as well as groups of organised neo-fascists. For Miles and Phizacklea, these
riots have shown ‘that racism within the working class was a significant political force’
(Miles/Phizacklea 1984: 34). In the course of these riots, dozens of victims were injured,
and numerous shops, cafés and private homes were damaged or destroyed.

The first documented high-profile racist murder in contemporary British history

was perpetrated within months of the Notting Hill riots. On the night of the 17 May 1959,
32-year-old Black man Kelso Cochrane was assaulted and stabbed in his chest by a group
of at least five to seven white youths. Since his arrival in Notting Hill from the then British
colony Antigua in 1954, Cochrane had been working as a carpenter and was saving money
to study law. During the night of the stabbing, he was accompanied by two friends who
were able to seek help from a white man who drove Cochrane to a nearby hospital.
However, Cochrane died of his stab wounds hours after the attack. According to police
investigations, there were at least ten bystanders who did not offer support during the
murder and later did not come forward in order help identifying the murderers (Daily
Mirror 20/05/59).

4.2.2 Police investigations and criminal prosecutions

The police and criminal justice responses to both episodes were characterised by various
selectivities and insufficiencies. During and in the aftermath of the riots, 177 people were
arrested and several dozens were convicted and received minor sentences. Looking at the
racialised identity of those who were arrested and prosecuted, it was reported that there
was a clear pattern of focusing on both white and Black people (most of whom being
male) (Guardian 04/09/58, 05/09/58). This indicates that the law enforcement and
criminal justice authorities interpreted these events, not as a moment of racist violence
and Black self-defence, but as a “racial conflict” in which both white and Black people
figured in equal measure as perpetrators. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that
the main blame was laid on Black people. In an internal police report about a follow-up
‘disturbance’ (cited in TNA HO 325/8) in Nottingham in early September, for instance,
the sequence of events is described in the following way: ‘[…] two groups of “Teddy
Boys” […] came into the troubled area. Apart from using abusive language to any
coloured men they saw, however, there were no acts of violence. The four Jamaicans
came along […]. Their manner was provocative – shouting rude comments at people
lining the pavement.’ (ibid.) In the conclusion, the initial racist harassment was entirely
86
ignored, and the affected Black men were made responsible for the ‘disturbance’: ‘The
police impression of this latest disturbance was that it was undoubtedly triggered off by
the four coloured men behaving so provocatively […]. (ibid.) There was, however, an
important exception to this approach. During the most important trial, High Court judge
Cyril Salmon sentenced nine white youths, aged between 15 and 18, to four years of
imprisonment for their involvement in the riots. This can be interpreted as an attempt to
select a small group of perpetrators for deterrent purposes, while most of the white
perpetrators were treated much more leniently. It should also be stressed that the vast
majority of rioters did not face any legal consequences.

The police investigation into the murder of Cochrane turned out to be largely
unsuccessful. The investigating police unit, led by Detective Superintendent Ian Forbes-
Leith, carried out house visits in the area and interviewed various people (Daily Mail
22/05/59). However, despite reports of various eyewitnesses, including one that claimed
to be able to identify the murders (Daily Mail 06/08/59; Guardian 06/08/59), the
investigators failed to identify concrete suspects and collect incriminating evidence. Thus,
drawing on Bowling’s phase model outlined in chapter 3, the police investigation has
never reached the fourth phase of public prosecution. Another striking feature is that the
police investigators strongly rejected the possibility of a racist motivation. In addition to
the fact that the murder had occurred in the immediate aftermath and the same location
of the Notting Hill racist riots, there were indeed indications of such a motivation.
According to the Observer, for instance, one witness claimed to have heard one of the
perpetrators shouting “Jim Crow” during the attack (Observer 24/05/59). Similarly, the
Daily Mirror reported of another witness who described the attack as an unprovoked act
of violence by a group of white youths (Daily Mirror 18/05/59). Furthermore, the British
Caribbean Association, an all-party organisation founded in the aftermath of the riots, had
sent an open letter to the Prime Minister warning about growing racist attacks in the area
only days before the murder (Times 15/05/59). The police, on the other hand, suggested
that the most likely motivation was robbery and speculated that the perpetrators were not
motivated by racism in their search for a target (Times 19/05/59). It can be speculated
that the police investigators’ ideological selectivity (the denial of a racist motivation) had
a direct impact on the investigation’s processual selectivity (the inability to move to the
stage of a criminal prosecution). Particularly interesting is that the police actively
intervened in the public discourse by accusing the Daily Mirror of providing a false
representation of the murder: ‘You will be doing the community a service by refraining

87
from any suggestion that this is racial murder. We are satisfied that it was the work of a
group of about six white anti-law teenagers who had only one motive in view – robbery
or attempted robbery […].’ (cited in Daily Mirror 19/05/59) This intervention was
successful: The Daily Mirror immediately published a front-page article that uncritically
forwarded the police story (ibid.). These public interventions were accompanied by
practices of gathering intelligence on minority and left-wing political actors. Having
examined archival documents of internal police correspondence following the 1958 riots,
I found that Nottingham Police monitored at least one public event organised by the local
branch of the Afro-West Indian Union, with speakers from the Movement for Colonial
Freedom, the Afro-Asian Progressive Movement, the Trotskyite Revolutionary Socialist
League, and the Labour Party. The confidential report was written for the Criminal
Investigation Department (cited in TNA HO 325/8).

4.2.3 Hegemonic political and media responses

Looking at both media coverage, government responses and parliamentary debates, both
the 1958 riots and the murder of Cochrane have attracted considerable attention
throughout the following months. Beginning with the predicational and affective
dimension of this discourse, there was an overwhelming tendency across the political
landscape to express concern and shock at both incidents, and to strongly condemn those
considered to be responsible for them. In a parliamentary statement from June 1959, for
instance, Conservative Home Secretary Butler spoke of ‘the recent deplorable murder of
a coloured man in Notting Hill’ (HC Deb 04/06/59: 369) and declared that ‘[r]acial
discrimination has no place in our law and responsible opinion everywhere will
unhesitatingly condemn any attempt to foment it.’ (ibid.). In a statement from September
1959, the Labour Party stated that it ‘utterly abhors every manifestation of racial
prejudice, and particularly condemns those instances which have recently occurred in this
country.’ (cited in Ramdin 1987: 210). This condemnatory rhetoric was echoed in the
news discourse. The Manchester Guardian repeatedly used the metaphor “infection” in
order characterise the riots, thus creating the image of an imminent threat that requires
‘drastic action to suppress them’ (Manchester Guardian 01/09/58; see also Manchester
Guardian 03/09/58a; 09/09/58). The Observer wrote that ‘[t]he disgraceful riots in
Nottingham and London have been a severe shock to this country.’ (Observer 07/09/58).
The Times called those involved in the riots ‘the scum of the whole city’ (Times

88
03/09/58). The Daily Mail wrote about the ‘disease of race hatred’ (Daily Mail 02/09/58)
and claimed that ‘[e]veryone with a spark of sense and decency deplores and detests it.’
(Daily Mail 03/09/58). Similarly, the Daily Mirror commented that ‘[e]very decent person
in this country is ashamed of the outbreak of race rioting and hooliganism in British
streets.’ (Daily Mirror 03/09/58) The main question, however, is how these events
themselves were interpreted and explained, and who exactly was the main object of these
condemnations. There was indeed an overwhelming tendency to portray the riots, not as
moments of collective racist perpetration, but rather as ‘racial clashes’ (Manchester
Guardian 03/09/58b), ‘racial outbursts’ (Times 03/09/58), ‘[r]ace war’ (Daily Mail
01/09/58), or ‘“colour” clash’ (Daily Mirror 02/09/58). Similarly, there was a tendency
to portray the murder of Cochrane not as an unprovoked act of violence, but as the tragic
result of an ‘inter-racial fight’ (Manchester Guardian 18/05/59), a ‘fight with some white
youths’ (Times 19/05/59), or ‘a struggle with five teenagers’ (Daily Mirror 18/05/59).
What was evoked in all these utterances is the image of a violent escalation to which both
people marked as “white” and “non-white” contributed to equal measure. Furthermore,
the pivotal role of racism as the main cause of the riots and murder was either entirely
denied, downplayed, or relativised by blaming racialised minorities for the racist hatred
directed against them. While such notions of “racial conflict” were primary used to relate
to the presence of people of Afro-Caribbean origin, they also extended to a wider
configuration of minority groups. Only days after the Nottingham riots, for instance, the
Guardian published a background article that listed other urban areas where ‘more
trouble’ (Manchester Guardian 27/08/58) following the ‘racial explosion in Nottingham’
(ibid.) might occur:

In London the Nigerians and Ghanaians tend to congregate in Clapham and

Westbourne Grove. The Greek and Turkish Cypriots favour St Pancras, Islington,
and Camden Town. Malayans and people from adjacent parts of the Commonwealth
are to be found in Bayswater. […] There are between 30,000 and 35,000 coloured
people in Birmingham, 10,000 of whom are Indians, 10,000 Pakistani, and some
15,000 West Indian. (ibid.)

In a background article published after the Notting Hill riots, the Times considered it
important to point to the presence of ‘long-established residents […] of gypsy stock’
(Times 03/09/58) which were stigmatised as being ‘tough, clannish people’ (ibid.) that
‘have no love for the police’ (ibid.).

89
 There is evidence to suggest that these images of “racial conflict” were directly
informed by expressions of concern about Britain’s imperial decline. Looking at the news
discourse, there was a shared concern that the riots and the murder might damage Britain’s
reputation and power position as ‘the governmental centre of the Commonwealth’
(Manchester Guardian 03/09/58a), as a country ‘which leads a multi-racial
Commonwealth’ (Observer 07/09/58b), or as ‘the mother country, the ultimate sanctuary’
(Daily Mail 05/09/58). Furthermore, all the newspapers immediately drew on classic
colonial stereotypes in order to “explain” the troubled state of a British nation that has
lost its geo-political power. However, given that there was an overwhelming tendency to
condemn “racial prejudice”, this reactivation of colonial stereotypes did not come without
adaptions. The most important discursive strategy was to distinguish between
“respectable” and “delinquent” segments of the racialised minority population, with only
the latter being blamed for the occurrence of “racial conflicts”. 62 The Daily Mail, for
instance, expressed indignation at the alleged presence of the ‘coloured criminal’, ‘the
brothel keeper’, or ‘the razor slashers and pimps’ in Notting Hill (Daily Mail 02/09/58).
The Daily Mirror wrote that ‘[t]he coloured brothel-keeper gives a filthy name to the mass
of Jamaicans, Indians, Pakistanis, and West Africans who work well and live decently,
and who are always welcome in these islands.’ (Daily Mirror 03/09/58) The Times wrote
that ‘[m]any of these immigrants are married men with families’, but that ‘there is also a
number of coloured men who do not work but live off the earnings of prostitutes, some
of them white.’ (Times 03/09/58). The Manchester Guardian, too, uncritically forwarded
the views of a local councillor from the Moss Side area of Manchester who claimed that
racist hostility was ‘provoked chiefly by the coloured men who are believed to live off
the earnings of white women’ (Manchester Guardian 27/08/58). In other articles,
however, the Manchester Guardian made at least some attempts to challenge such
stereotypes. For instance, another Guardian author wrote that “[t]he incidence of serious
crime has been no greater than with white groups, and, contrary to myth, West Indians
are not great organisers of vice.’ (Manchester Guardian 03/09/58a)

It needs to be stressed, however, that this postcolonial crisis discourse never

occurred in isolation but was closely entwined with the above-discussed urban crisis
discourse. Here again, there was an overwhelming tendency across the political spectrum
to portray the riots and the murder as violent symptoms of the hardships or “pathologies”

62
It is not difficult to see that the authors constructed this distinction in order avoid the impression that they
were prejudiced against Black people as such.

90
of “slum life”. For most commentators, it was important to characterise the areas where
those episodes of violence had occurred as ‘one of the most bedraggled slum areas of
West London’ (Manchester Guardian 02/09/58), ‘the slum districts of West London’
(Observer 07/09/58a), ‘a poor district’ that ‘has always been rough’ (Times 03/09/58), or
‘the dowdy areas of London’ (Daily Mail 23/05/59). What were the underlying
assumptions of assertations such as that ‘very nature of the Notting Hill area must in part
be responsible’ (Manchester Guardian 02/09/58)? First, it was attempted to make the
presence of Black people directly responsible for the culture of racist hostility in those
areas. The most important discursive strategy in this case was to locate the grievances of
white working-class people, not in the structural dynamics of the capitalist housing and
labour market or in the reluctance of the government to establish sufficient ameliorative
social policies, but in the alleged “extra burden” created by Black people. In the aftermath
of the murder of Cochrane, for instance, the Observer portrayed Notting Hill as ‘a district
where immigration from the West Indies has made a bad housing problem worse.’
(Observer 24/05/59) This also made it possible to rationalise acts of racist violence as
condemnable yet understandable responses to this “extra burden”. This was not only
confined to right-wing discourse. For instance, Labour MP George Rogers claimed that
‘[…] it was wrong to say this trouble had been started by hooligans. It was the reaction
of people sorely tried by some sections of the coloured population.’ (cited in Ramdin
1987: 211) Second, it was attempted to situate “racial conflict” in a more general everyday
culture of violence, delinquency, and crime characteristic of “slum areas”. This approach
was particularly important for liberal commentators who sought to connect anxieties
about the alleged pathologies of working-class life with the image of Britain as a tolerant
society which does not have a significant racism problem. As the Times put it, ‘The
general impression gained throughout this area is that the trouble is mostly caused by
clashes between gangs of youth “toughs” aged between 15 and 18. Their motives are
rarely racial hatred and if the coloured people were not in the area the white youths would
fight among themselves.’ (Times 19/05/59) Similarly, the Observer wrote that the riots
‘have reminded us that, after twelve years of the Welfare State and a steadily rising
standard of living, there are still slums in our cities where living conditions are so sordid
that they are little better than nurseries of crime and violence.’ (Observer 07/09/58b) In
these accounts, there was indeed a stronger reluctance to problematise the presence of
Black people in Britain. But their experiences of racism were denied or relativised.
Furthermore, law-and-order measures rather than social policies were proposed in order

91
to deal with the problem of “slum life” (see for example Manchester Guardian 01/09/58;
Times 03/09/58; Daily Mirror 03/09/58; Daily Mail 02/09/58). The only exception to
these types of “slum discourse” came from the left wing of the social democratic
hegemony project. There were various white Labour politicians, trade unionists and
media commentators that criticised the ongoing racialisation of the “slum discourse” and
put a stronger emphasis on condemning the activities of far-right groups in such areas.
The Trade Union Congress, for instance, warned that ‘[e]vidence is accumulating that
elements which propagated racial hatred in Britain in prewar days are once more fanning
the flames of violence.’ (cited in Daily Mail 05/09/58) However, what was criticised less
explicitly was the everyday and political culture of racism not only in the “inner city” but
in British society as a whole.

This complex racialised crisis discourse had far-reaching consequences on the level
of state policy and legislation. According to Miles (1984: 257-8), Solomos (1988: 29-41)
and Bowling (1998: 31-4), these official responses largely went in two directions. First,
there was a growing number of right-wing voices calling for restricted entry and
settlement of those migrants marked as “non-white”. Particularly remarkable was that
throughout the early to mid-1960s both Conservative and Labour governments took up
those demands which had been uttered by right-wing conservative and far right actors and
initiated a process of restricting Black and Asian immigration in the form of various
legislative and policy initiatives, in particular the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts 1962
and 1968 (Bowling 1998: 33-6; Miles/Phizacklea 1984: 45-73). Although these Acts did
not make direct references to “colour” or “race”, they were a direct result of the
underlying racist immigration debate that exclusively focused on those “Commonwealth”
labour migrants marked as “non-white” (Solomos 1988: 36-7; Solomos 1988: 57-59). 63
Overall, then, the post-1958 period was characterised by an ideological convergence
between the social-democratic and conservative hegemony projects which led to the
institutionalisation of racism in the area of migration control. As Solomos puts it, ‘the
riots helped to speed up the process of racialisation, and structured official ideologies
about the consequences of Black migration and settlement.’ (Solomos 1988: 34) These
Immigration Acts also marked the beginning of a growing presence of police forces
within the everyday life of racialised minorities. In a report from 1965, for instance, the

63
According to Pratibha Parmar, Black and Asian women were in a particularly vulnerable position because
they were confronted with both racist and sexist discrimination by border control agencies (Parmar 1982:
243-5).

92
West Indian Standing Conference reported that Black communities had been increasingly
affected by police discrimination and brutality (Hunte 1965). In this sense, the post-
1958/9 moment also became the starting point for the longstanding pattern of
discriminatory police violence against racialised minorities which will be further explored
throughout the following chapters.

Second, the experiences of the 1958 riots and the murder of Cochrane led to various
initiatives to establish anti-discriminatory legislation and policy. In the area of
parliamentary politics, it was especially a group of Labour and Liberal politicians who
attempted put this issue on the agenda (see for example HC Deb 12/11/58: 410; HC Deb
07/12/1959: 115-17). These initiatives, however, were not primarily motivated by anti-
racist solidarity. For instance, there were repeated expressions of concern about Britain’s
geo-political power and international reputation. For example, James Callaghan (MP for
Cardiff/Southeast) stated in a parliamentary speech that ‘this policy of racial
discrimination and intolerance is dividing the Commonwealth more than any other
subject under discussion in the world today.’ (HC Deb 07/12/59: 110) The Liberal Party,
too, highlighted that ‘if we were to legislate against colour we would in the end bring
about the disintegration of the Commonwealth.’ (cited in Ramdin 1987: 212). Given that
the majority of the Conservative Party was reluctant to support such an agenda, it was not
until the Labour Party took over government in 1964 that a major breakthrough was
achieved. Two Race Relations Acts were passed in 1965 and 1968 which led to the
penalisation of “incitement to racial hatred” and the establishment of the Race Relations
Board, the first associative apparatuses in the area of “race relations”. In terms of their
actual impact on the existing culture of racist discrimination, however, these initiatives
remained limited. Solomos, for instance, argues that ‘[w]hile the Home Office was
directly responsible after 1962 for the enforcement of strict immigration controls, the
responsibility for enforcing the 1965 and 1968 Acts was given to weak quasi-
governmental bodies.’ (Solomos 1988: 39) Thus, drawing on Offe’s (1974) model of
institutional selectivities, the state’s approach to “race relations” was characterised by a
structural selectivity, that is, the asymmetrical distribution of resources to its repressive
and associative apparatuses. What is more, the emerging “race relations” legislation
directly served to justify the legislative initiatives to further restrict (post-)colonial
immigration. This stance was most famously encapsulated by Roy Hattersley, Labour MP
for Birmingham Sparkbrook, who in a parliamentary speech in November 1965

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proclaimed that ‘[…] integration without limitation is impossible; […] limitation without
integration is indefensible.’ (HC Deb 23/11/1965: 359)

4.2.4 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist responses

Both the 1958 riots and the murder of Cochrane had a profound impact on the political
consciousness of racialised minority communities. Given that the established party
political, civil society, and media organisations were characterised by strong racist
selectivities on both an ideological and processual level, there were growing discussions
about the necessity of self-organisation and self-defence. Furthermore, these
organisational processes were informed by attempts to overcome ethnic or cultural lines
of demarcation in order to fight against racism more effectively. The murder of Kelso
Cochrane, too, had a profound impact on the Black community in Notting Hill and
beyond, with more than 1,200 people attending his funeral procession (Silver 2006). It
needs to be stressed, however, that these responses to the Cochrane case were still limited.
For instance, there was no family justice campaign and no attempts were made to
politically intervene in the police investigation or the inquest. This also means that the
inquest had remained an institutional procedure in the narrow sense and had not become
the ‘material condensation’ (Poulantzas 2014: 73) of conflicts between a wider
configuration of political actors. It was only in the following months and years that a
distinct mosaic of organisations and campaigns emerged that would have been able to
carry out and facilitate such interventions (Shukra 1998: 9-26). 64 This included not only
classic pressure groups (such as the Coloured Peoples’ Progressive Organisation (1958)
or the West Indian Standing Conference (1959/62)), but also workers’ associations (such
as the Indian Workers’ Association (GB) (1958), the Pakistani Workers’ Association
(1961) or the West Indian Workers’ Association (1961)), journalistic organisations (such
as the West Indian Gazette (1958)) and cultural projects (such as the first carnivals in
Camden (1959) and Notting Hill (1964)) (Sivanandan 2008: 96-102; Shukra 1998: 10-
19; Wild 2015: 34-35). Furthermore, as Schofield and Jones (2019: 151-169)
demonstrate, the experience of the 1958 riots became a pivotal moment in the formation
of the New Left and strengthened anti-racist positions among white left-wing actors
located outside or at the margins of the Labour Party. During the early to mid-1960s,

64
For an illuminating exploration of local political responses to the 1958 riots in Notting Hill, see
Schofield/Jones (2019).

94
attempts were made by many of these organisations to cooperate with each other in order
to strengthen anti-racist positions in mainstream political debates. In 1965, the umbrella
organisation Campaign against Racial Discrimination (CARD) was formed which,
following Shukra, can be characterised as ‘the first substantial postwar attempt of black
and white activists to intervene in national British politics on the “race” question.’
(Shukra 1998: 19) Furthermore, Shukra et al. (2004: 33-34) characterise CARD as one of
the earliest attempts to establish a ‘transitional public sphere’, that is, to overcome the
marginalisation of minority politics by establishing links with the realm of mainstream
politics. Its key aim was to give a voice to minority perspectives within mass media
discourses, party politics and policymaking processes at local and central state level, in
particular vis-à-vis those apparatuses occupied by the Labour Party. To that end, it
primarily engaged in professionalised campaigning, lobbying, petitioning and bargaining
practices. However, the example of CARD also shows that this approach was highly
limited because of the extensive system of racist selectivities by which the official
political process in the post-war period was characterised. After heated debates over the
cooperation with the Labour government, several organisations with a stronger state-
critical position left CARD, thus triggering its break-up in the late 1960s (Shukra 1998:
21-25; Ashe et al. 2016: 40).

In the existing literature on the politics of anti-racism in the post-war period, it has
been argued that it was the experience of CARD’s failure which paved the way for the
growing influence of anti-hegemonic political forces with a stronger focus on
autonomous self-organisation and street confrontation (see for example Shukra 1998: 19-
25). Indeed, as will be discussed in the next chapter, it was from the late 1960s and early
1970s that those political forces gained influence. There is evidence to suggest, however,
that there had already been earlier attempts to put forward such strategies. This includes
not only spontaneous forms of self-defence during the racist riots themselves (Fryer 2010:
376-81), but also more organised approaches. In the aftermath of the murder of Cochrane,
for instance, organisations such as the Afro-West Indian Union and the Socialist Labour
League, a newly formed group of predominantly white Trotskyite activists, called for the
establishment of anti-fascist “defence squads” (NA HO-325/8). Furthermore, it was in
response to the above-mentioned wave of antisemitic arson attacks in the early 1960s that
Jewish activists established the 62 Group (1962-1975) which was directly inspired by the
43 Group’s strategy of militant self-defence against fascist attacks (Copsey 2000: 107-
110). For these organisations, the strategy of self-defence was a matter of necessity and

95
urgency in light of the state’s failure to tackle the problem of racist, antisemitic and fascist
violence. Furthermore, it was these organisations that began to put this problem in the
context of ongoing and growing socio-economic hardship and precarity in urban working-
class areas (thus putting into question Macmillan’s “never had it so good” slogan). In a
report on the Nottingham riots, for instance, the Trotskyite newspaper Socialist Fight
discussed the relation between neo-fascist violence, media and state racism, class
domination and socio-economic crisis tendencies. Overall, its interpretative framework
was informed by a traditional materialist understanding of racism as an instrument of
working-class manipulation by the ‘capitalist enemy’ (cited in TNA HO 325/8). But it also
developed some more perceptive thoughts about the particular role of urban working-
class deprivation as a key reference point for racist and neo-fascist politics, including
some concerns about the devastating political impact of an expansion of socio-economic
crisis tendencies in the future:

Behind this violence lies, as a main factor, unemployment. […] While no direct
connection can be drawn at this stage, it is clear that increasing unemployment
poisons the whole atmosphere. […] As yet this is not a big factor, but what is going
to happen when there are a million unemployed? Already at least one racist
organisation, the KKK, has tried to utilise the incident to spread its influence. (cited
in: ibid.)

It is also noteworthy that those minority organisations which rejected anti-hegemonic

notions of militancy nonetheless supported the idea of community-based self-defence.
During a meeting organised by the Committee of African Organisations after the
Cochrane murder, for instance, the attending ‘representatives of more than forty
organisations’ (Manchester Guardian 22/05/59) reportedly declared that ‘we do not
subscribe to any idea of “strong-arm bands” or “vigilante committees”’ (cited in ibid.),
but nonetheless demanded some form of self-defence: ‘In view of the continued tolerance
by the authorities concerned of propaganda inciting hatred against coloured residents, we
demand that we be given authority as special constables to protect our ourselves and our
community.” (cited in ibid.) This demonstrates that even those organisations with a
moderate political profile made a case for the urgency of self-organised protection in light
of state inaction.

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4.3 Conclusion

In this chapter, I demonstrated that the first post-war conjuncture between the late 1940s
and mid-1960s was characterised by a consistent pattern of racist exclusion and violence
rooted in a wider popular and official culture of (post-)colonial nationalism and racism.
While the immediate post-war conjuncture was characterised by integrationist forms of
conflict management in many social and political areas, racialised minorities were
systematically excluded from these limited opportunities of political participation and
economic advancement. The specific problem of violent racism was only the most
dramatic manifestation of these tendencies. It brought to the fore that not even the most
basic right of bodily integrity was guaranteed by the executive, legislative and judicial
sections of the British state in an effective manner. Against this background, existing
attempts in the literature to directly apply the “post-war settlement” thesis to the issue of
racism and violence is only partially convincing. It is especially its schematic
periodisation which leads to the untenable conclusion that the societal and political
conditions for racism had been unfavourable in the first two post-war decades. My
argument, on the other hand, is that there had already been a racialised and spatialised
crisis discourse that related to the following two processes: On the one hand, it became
clear that the longstanding and deep-seated culture of pride in the British Empire had
directly transformed into a resentful crisis of national identity in the moment of imperial
decline. On the other hand, the post-war boom had from the beginning been undermined
by more fundamental patterns of socio-economic and socio-geographical inequality
which became the breeding ground for alarmist discourses about the dangers of “slum
life”. 65 Within both discourses, racism came to play an important role: The
problematisation and antagonisation of people marked as “non-white” became an
ideological substitute not only for the uncomfortable process of acknowledging the
imperial horrors of the past, but also for the difficult task of overcoming the material
conditions of inequality, hardship and other forms of preventable suffering. Particularly
important for the transformation of such hostile attitudes into a culture of physical
violence was their underlying ‘“territorial logic”’ (Ashe et al. 2016: 36), that is, the
paranoid assumption that “white British” territory needs to be defended against an
“invasion” from the outside (through immigration) and “infection” from the inside

65
Compared to the “inner city” discourse that will be examined in the following chapters, this “slum”
discourse was still localised and fragmentary. But it undoubtedly existed as a consistent element in
hegemonic public debates.

97
(through urban settlement). Its key political driving force was the re-emerging milieu of
neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups who targeted both Black, Asian, and Jewish
communities.

While most incidents of violence in the late 1940s and 1950s remained beneath the
surface of mainstream public attention, the racist riots in West London and Nottingham
as well as the racist murder of Kelso Cochrane massively reinforced these racialised crisis
discourses. It was in this context that the imagery of “race riots” as a symbol of the crisis
of the “inner city” emerged. As will be discussed in the following chapters, this imagery
became one of the most important ideological lenses through which many later conflicts
over racism and violence would be interpreted. What is most striking about these two
episodes from a relational perspective is that a relatively small groups of everyday racists
and organised fascists managed to influence mainstream politics up to the highest level
of state policy. Although their acts of violence were largely condemned, they nonetheless
paved the way for the implementation and intensification of racist immigration policies.
At the same time, the post-1958 moment set in motion the long-term process of
establishing an anti-discriminatory legal framework, starting with the inclusion of
“incitement to racial hatred” in the catalogue of prosecutable offences. In light of the
pervasiveness of racist discrimination and violence, however, the impact of the 1965 and
1968 Race Relations Acts was still highly limited.

Given the lack of protection from state authorities and the lack of solidarity from
hegemonic political forces, the only serious attempt to oppose this hostile climate came
from those targeted by racism themselves (as well as a small number of white radical left-
wing activists). An important subject of discussion within these early initiatives and
campaigns, in particular in response to the racist riots and the murder of Cochrane, were
the strengths and limitations of conventional pressure group activity within a political
terrain characterised by strong racist selectivities. While the call for self-defence and
militant confrontation was still marginal, it nonetheless triggered first controversies
between different actors involved in the fight against racist, antisemitic and fascist
violence. Thus, it was in the immediate post-1958 moment that controversial debates
emerged which would shape the politics of minority self-organisation, anti-racism, and
anti-fascism in the decades to come. I will come back to this in the following chapters.

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5. The political conflicts over racist violence between the late 1960s and mid-1970s

In this chapter, I will continue my examination of the public debates and political conflicts
over racism and violence under the specific circumstances of the late 1960s and 1970s.
More specifically, I will explore the wider politics of (anti-)racism through the lens of a
confrontational episode which in the existing literature is occasionally mentioned but
barely analysed in a more systematic manner: the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in
Southall, London, in June 1976. In a first step, I will begin with an examination of the
wider social and political circumstances within which this murder was perpetrated.
Furthermore, the changing patterns of minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist political
opposition will be explored. Finally, moving towards the societal and conjunctural level
of analysis, I will situate these changing political relations of forces in the specific context
of multiple crisis tendencies emerging, solidifying, and overlapping in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. This will also demonstrate the strengths of a multi-dimensional crisis-
theoretical framework for making sense of the political conflict dynamics in question
(5.1). In a second step, I will offer an in-depth analysis of the public discourses, juridical
procedures, and political struggles in the aftermath of the murder of Gurdip Singh
Chaggar. This case study will show not only how these case-specific institutional and
political dynamics were informed by the broader patterns and dynamics outlined in the
first step, but also which distinct impact they had on the re-configuration of the politics
of (anti-)racism in the second half of the 1970s and beyond (5.2). Drawing on the insights
developed in the context of the previous chapter, I will conclude with some reflections
upon the wider historical significance of the period between the late 1960s and mid-1970s
(5.3).

5.1 Context analysis: The political conflicts over racism in the context of the dual
crisis of capitalist accumulation and political legitimation in the late 1960s and
early 1970s

In the existing literature on the politics of (anti-)racism in British post-war history, there
is a strong tendency to emphasise the significance of the period between the late 1960s
and late 1970s, and to explain this significance through a crisis-analytical lens. For
instance, Solomos et al. point to ‘the specificity of the sixties and seventies’ (Solomos et
al. 1982: 12, emphasis in original) and add that it was in this period that ‘[…] race has
increasingly become one of the means through which hegemonic relations are secured in

100
a period of structural crisis management.‘ (ibid.: 9; see also Hall et al. 2013: 300-310)
More specifically, three overarching crisis tendencies are usually discussed in this
context. First, the crisis of the Fordist mode of accumulation and the accompanying
political regime of welfare statism and corporatist bargaining in Britain and other centres
of the capitalist world-economy in the global north. This process was characterised by
two overlapping structural developments. On the one hand, the already-existing long-
term process of deindustrialisation which further accelerated throughout the 1960s and
1970s. On the other hand, a two-year global economic recession which emerged in the
wake of the disintegration of the Bretton Woods System in 1971 as well as the oil crisis
in 1973 (Glyn et al. 1990: 71-113; Hobsbawm 1995: 403-432). The predominant type of
‘crisis management’ (Offe 1974) which was chosen by both Conservative and Labour
governments throughout the 1970s was to move in the direction of wage restraints, cuts
in welfare and other areas of public expenditure, as well as legal restrictions to the
bargaining power of trade unions (Phillips 2006: 190-91; Gallas 2015: 75-95). This
austerity approach further intensified the negative socio-economic repercussions of the
crisis. The unemployment rate, for instance, almost tripled from an average of 3.2 percent
between 1965 and 1973 to an average of 9% between 1980 and 1983 (ONS 2021c). What
is especially relevant for my research is that the negative impacts were especially severe
in the traditional centres of industrial production, such as in Greater London, West
Midlands, or West Yorkshire. For instance, those residential areas officially classified as
‘Inner City London’ saw disproportionally high unemployment rates and a strong
population loss of 2.2 million between 1971 and 1981, with emigrants usually having
skilled and affluent backgrounds (Benyon 1984: 172; see also Phizacklea/Miles 1980:
50). Second, the late 1960s and early 1970s was characterised by various political
dynamics that amounted to what can be called a crisis of legitimacy. For instance, in the
second half of the 1960s and the early 1970s there was an increase in industrial action,
such as in the context of the 1966 seamen’s strike, two unofficial miners’ strikes in 1969
and 1970, as well as the 1972 miners’ strike with 280,000 participants (Thorpe 2001;
Taylor 2004: 1-49; Phillips 2006: 190-201; Lyddon 2015). Additionally, the mid- to late
1960s saw the emergence of a plethora of counter-cultural and non-parliamentary
oppositional movements, such as non-conformist youth cultures, alternative music scenes
as well as new currents in the area of feminist, civil rights, anti-war, anti-racist and Black
politics, which began to put into question the ‘hell of the Affluent Society’ (Marcuse
1991: 23), in particular its traditionalist and authoritarian political culture. The late 1960s

101
also saw the emergence of a distinct civil rights movement in Northern Ireland whose
suppression by police forces and loyalist groups became one factor in the violent
escalation of the conflict in the 1970s (McKittrick/McVea 2012: 30-87). Third, the
decline of the British Empire, which had already been at an advanced stage by the late
1960s and early 1970s, continued to reverberate within public debates about Britain’s
current and future geo-political and world-economic position. As will be discussed in the
next section, the hegemonic political debates at that time indicate that the process of
decolonisation continued to be the source of what Gilroy calls a ‘perennial crisis of
national identity’ (Gilroy 2004: 97; see also Schwarz 2011).

Such crisis-analytical periodisations are useful insofar as they help to understand

why it was in this period that the already existing everyday and political culture of racist
hostility and violence further intensified, but also become the subject of new forms of
political opposition. At the same time, however, there is a tendency among existing
periodisations of the politics of (anti-)racism in the late 1960s and 1970s to discuss these
crisis tendencies in isolation from each other. The authors of “Policing the Crisis”, for
instance, highlight the significance of a multi-dimensional crisis-analytical framework on
a theoretical level, but in their empirical analysis actually prioritise the post-1968 crisis
of legitimacy (Hall et al. 2013: 215-67). Gilroy analyses the moment of postcolonial
decline as the primary, if not exclusive, source of crisis discourses in the British political
and popular culture (Gilroy 1987, 2004). Other authors such as Phizacklea and Miles
(Phizacklea/Miles 1980; Miles/Phizacklea 1984) and Solomos (1988) focus on the crisis
of capitalism as the main structural determinant of the shifting political landscape in the
1970s. Within each of these accounts, however, there is a risk of falling back on a one-
dimensional approach with limited explanatory capacities. My argument, on the other
hand, is that a multi-dimensional crisis-theoretical framework is necessary in order to
fully grasp the conflict dynamics over racism in general and its violent manifestations in
particular that took place in the 1970s.

5.1.1 Hegemonic politics and media discourse

I will begin with an examination of the hegemonic political debates, state policies and
legislative initiatives about “race relations” and racism in the early to mid-1970s, focusing
especially on the specific ways in which these related to the just discussed multiple crisis
tendencies. Two themes in particular kept the racialisation of public discourse alive
102
throughout this period. First, there was an ongoing hostile discourse about postcolonial
immigration and settlement which contributed to the expansion of restrictive control
measures in the early 1970s. Although this theme had established itself as a continuous
subject of public attention since the early 1960s, there were several moments between the
late 1960s and mid-1970s which elevated it to the centre of mainstream public attention,
in particular the arrival of Asian people with a British passport who had fled from Kenya
in 1968, Uganda in 1972 and Malawi in 1976. For the discussion of this chapter, it is
especially important to take a closer look at the public discourse about the arrival of
Malawi-Asian refugees – not only because it has not yet been explored systematically in
the literature, but also because it had occurred immediately prior to the racist murder of
Gurdip Singh Chaggar. 66 In May 1976, a public “scandal” had evolved around the arrival
of two families who sought to escape the persecution of South Asian communities in
Malawi. In the absence of alternative accommodation, the West Sussex County Council
provided the families with rooms at an airport hotel for a period of six weeks. First
reported by the right-wing populist newspaper The Sun in early May, the story received
widespread media attention over the following weeks. The initial coverage was combined
with another story about the arrival of 61 Malawian-Asian refugees who had been
expelled by the Malawi government in mid-May. The overall coverage of these events
was characterised by some variations, but it was clearly dominated by strategies of
personalisation, biologisation and externalisation which served to project Britain’s socio-
economic and geo-political decline onto a small group of vulnerable and innocent
outsiders marked as “non-white” and “non-British”. Three discursive topoi were
particularly relevant in order to justify this hostile and restrictive stance: First, the topos
of “burden” which creates the image of a British national economy and welfare system
riddled by scarce resources in a moment of economic recession in order to call for the
restriction of immigration as an aggravating factor (see Reisigl/Wodak 2001: 78); second
the topos of “abuse” which seeks to justify the exclusion of Asian migrants by demonising
them as “lazy” and “undisciplined” yet “cunning” and “deceitful” people who make every
effort to circumvent existing immigration rules and exploit the alleged generosity of the

66
There is only one very recent study that analyses some aspects of the media discourse about “Asian
immigration” and police-community confrontations in 1976 (Bland 2019). The main focus, however, is on
local news coverage as well as the Lancashire town of Blackburn. Furthermore, the study raises the issue
of racism and crisis, but lacks a more systematic theoretical approach that would allow to examine the
multiple crisis construals that were both condensed into and displaced by the notion of a “crisis of race
relations” (ibid.: 176-178). Finally, it tends to reproduce a monolithic notion of mainstream media
discourse, drawing repeatedly on the generalised terms ‘the media’ or ‘the press’ (ibid.: 164, 168, 169, 170,
178).

103
welfare system (see ibid.: 80); third, the topos of “threat” which puts their arrival and
presence in the context of “racial conflict” and wider social and political instability (see
ibid.: 77); and forth the topos of “limited tolerance” which claims that the white British
population is only able to tolerate the arrival and settlement of a small number of those
imagined as racialised others. On an affective level, these strategies and topoi have the
effect of invoking a combination of paranoid anxiety about the alleged power of external
intruders on the one hand, and conformist indignation about their alleged refusal to “play
by the rules” on the other. Looking at the first headlines such as ‘Four-star hotel home for
Asians’ (Daily Mail 04/05/76), ‘Migrants live in top hotel’ (Daily Mirror 04/05/76), ‘Four
stars too many’ (Times 05/05/76b) and ‘The way to four-stars’ (Guardian 05/05/76b),
there was a clear emphasis on the quality of the temporary accommodation. Thus, rather
than being seen as a pragmatic solution by a local council, the chosen image creates the
impression of an unfair privilege given to Asian immigrants in a general situation of
socio-economic hardship. It was especially within the left-wing and right-wing populist
tabloid press that this was directly combined with images of threat and catastrophe, based
on exaggerated images about a ‘New flood of Asians to Britain’ (Daily Mirror 06/05/76)
whose destructive impact naturally leads to ‘fears’ (ibid.) among the white British
population (see also Daily Mail 17/05/76). In contrast to these openly hostile responses,
the left-liberal and liberal-conservative segments developed a more ambivalent
perspective, with some authors highlighting the citizenship and settlement rights of the
arriving families (Guardian 05/05/76b; 08/06/76b; Times 05/05/76a). It was especially
the Guardian which published more sympathetic stories. For instance, in a sarcastic
comment entitled ‘The terrorised immigrants’, the author criticised the overall hostile
discourse, suggesting that the ‘[t]he British press can pride itself on one of its more
successful campaigns – it has managed to chase 13 wretched and bewildered Asians from
a four star hotel into a former workhouse […].’ (Guardian 09/05/76) In other articles,
however, both the Guardian and Times participated in the alarmist discourse about
allegedly large numbers of Asian immigrants (Guardian 05/05/76a; Times 18/05/76,
27/05/76a). The theme also attracted widespread attention in party political debates, such
as during a parliamentary debate about “immigration” on 20 May 1976 (HC Deb
20/05/76). Various Conservative MPs used this “scandal” as an opportunity to advocate
the intensification of racist immigration control practices. For instance, John MacGregor
(MP for South Norfolk) attempted to rationalise racist hostility as a legitimate type of
defence mechanism: ‘[T]hese recent incidents […] have created enormous resentment

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among ordinary working people and pensioners. […] [I]n our current economic
conditions they do our immigration policy and social security system no good in the
public eye. (ibid.: 1689) Peter Hordern (MP for Horsham and Crawley) expressed ‘the
strongest objection to allowing immigrants into this country who immediately become
dependent upon our social security services.’ (ibid.: 1690) Tim Renton (MP for Mid
Sussex) claimed that ‘the possession of a United Kingdom passport should in no way be
thought of as a passport to the social services’ (ibid.: 1691). Responses from the Labour
Party were more ambivalent. Some left-wing Labour MPs attempted to actively challenge
these hostile positions both within parliament and the wider media debate. For instance,
Sidney Bidwell (MP for Southall) attempted to put into question the strategies of
exaggeration used to justify restrictive positions: ‘the story of the Malawi Asian family
in West Sussex has been ballooned out of all proportion to its importance to the British
people’ (ibid.: 1690). Other Labour MPs, however, either defended existing or demanded
further postcolonial immigration restrictions. Andrew Faulds (MP for Smethwick/Warley
East) referred to Britain’s ‘obligations in respect of a limited number of immigrants’
(ibid.: 1692) and put this in the context of ‘her post-imperial responsibilities’ (ibid.)
Marcus Lipton, MP for Lambeth Central/Brixton, described the Asian-Malawi family
case as an example of illegal immigrants abusing a flawed border control regime: ‘[T]here
have been various loopholes in the immigration controls, of which unscrupulous people
have taken advantage’ (ibid.: 1689). During a parliamentary debate on 17 May 1976, Bob
Mellish (MP for Bermondsey and former Labour chief whip) made use of the topos of
limited tolerance in order to justify hostilities among the white majority population:

Is my hon. Friend aware […] that many people believe that this nation has done all
that it should have done, and that its record of receiving British passport holders is
one of great honour and integrity, but that they are now saying “Enough is enough”?
(HC Deb 17/05/76: 967). 67

This discourse about postcolonial migrants was inseparably linked with an ongoing
discourse about their settlement in urban working-class areas. As was discussed in the
previous chapter, it was in the wake of the 1958 racist riots and the murder of Kelso
Cochrane that the “urban crisis” discourse became increasingly racialised. Since then, it
has established itself as a recurrent feature of public discourse. Against this background,

67
The “enough is enough” remark was approvingly referenced by Enoch Powell in a later debate (HC Deb
24/05/76).

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it is unsurprising that it also played a significant role during the period between the late
1960s and mid-1970s which were characterised by economic stagnation and recession. In
other words, no substantial ideological work was required to establish associative links
between “urban decay” and “race relations” because these links had already been
established in the previous years. Looking at the news coverage of the first half of the
1970s, for instance, there were repeated reports about “slums” and “ghettos” in British
cities that were associated with the presence of racialised minorities. Among those urban
areas which were repeatedly highlighted as spaces of “urban decay” and “racial tensions”
were Acton, Brixton, Hackney, Hammersmith, Islington, Lambeth, Southall and
Tottenham in London, Small Heath and Handsworth in Birmingham, Moss Side in
Manchester, West End in Newcastle, Leicester, Oldham as well as Glasgow (Guardian
08/05/73, 11/03/75, 13/08/75, 06/10/75, 17/01/76, 29/05/76; Observer 30/05/76; Times
18/09/70, 10/04/75a, 10/04/75b; Daily Mail 24/04/73, 24/05/76; Daily Mirror 20/10/75,
24/01/76). However, it was also in this period that this racialised “urban crisis” discourse
changed in various regards. Most notably, there was a tendency to make use of referential
strategies with a greater scope: While the “urban crisis” discourse of the 1950s had often
been confined to “slum districts” within the “inner city”, it was now increasingly extended
to the “inner cities” or entire “cities” at large. Looking at typical news reports that
explicitly discuss the relation between “urban decline” and “race relations”, it became
more common to use titles such as ‘The struggle for our cities” (Guardian 08/05/73),
‘Front line fight against the inner city syndrome’ (Guardian 15/10/74), ‘Warning of
“urban crisis” in Britain’ (Times 21/05/73), ‘Life in the city of stress’ (Daily Mail
24/04/73), ‘Urban crisis’ (Daily Mail 21/05/73), or ‘Danger ahead in the seedy cities of
strife’ (Daily Mirror 10/09/76). Similar developments can also be identified in the area of
policy making. In April 1974, for instance, the London Council of Social Service
published a report titled ‘The Inner City” that warned about the socio-economic decline
of these areas and its impact upon “race relations”: ‘Within the stress areas are
concentrated certain ethnic minority groups. We shall find the word “ghetto” used
increasingly to describe these areas, whether we like it or not.’ (cited in Daily Mail
24/04/73). Within all these contributions, the presence of racialised minorities was
highlighted as symptom or symbol of the wider “decline” or “crisis” of urban life. Taking
a closer look at the underlying explanatory strategies, however, there were certain
differences across the political landscape. On the political right, there was a strong
tendency to identify the presence of racialised minorities as a cause of the “urban crisis”

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and its negative impact upon “race relations.” One way in which this was justified was
by way of the already discussed topoi of burden and limited tolerance. According to the
Daily Mail, for instance, ‘the basic problem of race relations in this country’ is ‘[t]he vast
number of whites in these days of economic drift are in real fear of losing their fair share
to the myriad of coloured “foreigners”’ (ibid.). In a public statement from September
1976, Shadow Home Secretary William Whitelaw made a similar assertation that ‘general
economic revival in the cities would go an immense way towards relieving racial
aggravation which is often caused not by any deep-seated prejudice, but by the awareness
of so many people competing for few resources, be those resources jobs or housing.’
(cited in Guardian 18/09/76) Other commentators drew on what can be called the topos
of integration, that is, the assumption that the hardships of working-class racialised
communities are primarily due to their alleged inability or unwillingness to adapt to the
educational system and labour market. In an article from June 1976, for instance, the
Daily Mail published an article that amplified the views of a young Black man who was
introduced as ‘the vanguard of the new black middle class’ (Daily Mail 02/06/76) and
was obviously selected for promoting prejudiced views about Black family and everyday
life in the “inner city”, including statements such as: ‘It’s very much the West Indian way
of discipline to hit your children.’ (ibid.); “Some West Indians make it hard for us all, by
standing about on street corners all day looking for trouble.” (ibid.); or ‘Too many black
people use their colour as an excuse for every bad thing that happens to them.’ (ibid.)

A key aspect of these interventions was the assumption that there will be large-scale
“racial conflicts” in the near future if nothing is done in the present. Compared to the
“slum” discourse of the 1950s, this alarmism was clearly more dramatic and also took
new forms. Most notably, the early 1970s saw the emergence of a discourse about
“mugging” and “gang violence” that was centred upon young Black men with an alleged
biography of failed upbringing, lacking education, unemployment, and an inherent
disposition to violence. It is not necessary to recapitulate this discourse in great detail
insofar as this has already been done in the literature (see in particular Hall et al. 2013;
Gilroy 1982, 1987; Solomos 1988). There are certain aspects, however, which have
received less attention but are highly relevant for my case study. For instance, it was not
only the phenomena of “street crime” and “urban unrest”, but also that of Black political
radicalism which became increasingly associated with the notion of “urban crisis” at the
turn of the decade. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was especially the Black
Power movement which received much media attention as a type of ‘extremism’ (Times

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15/03/71; see also Guardian 06/10/69) or ‘fanaticism’ (Times 15/03/71) which, as one
Guardian author claimed, is ‘unnecessary and unwanted here’ (Guardian 14/01/71).
Although the movement itself was relatively small and lasted only for a couple of years,
many news articles contributed to creating the image of Black Power as a conspiratorial
force which infiltrates other organisations and events in order to sow ‘the seeds of race
hate’ (Daily Mirror 26/09/69). A popular strategy that was used in this context was to
construct the image of recurrent Black Power “plots” or “takeovers” of demonstrations,
political organisations, public bodies or entire urban areas (see for example: Daily Mail
29/07/68; Times 02/12/68: 1; 27/04/70: 1;12/06/73: 3; Guardian 02/08/77). Despite the
decline of Black Power politics at the turn of the decade, such warnings about the threat
of Black radicalism and militant action still figured in the “urban crisis” discourse of the
mid-1970s. In a news report on an incident of physical confrontation between a group of
Black political activists and police officers in South London in June 1973, for instance,
the Daily Mail stated in an exaggerated fashion that ‘a whole community seems to have
been involved in a confrontation with the police’ (Daily Mail 12/06/73). In a less
sensationalist article from July 1976, the Times expressed cautious hope that for young
Black people ‘the rhetoric of revolution no langer has the same appeal’ but added that
‘much bitterness remains and there is too often confrontation with the police.’ (Times
30/07/76)

Another aspect that has not yet received much scholarly attention is that the
racialised discourse about “inner city decline”, “gang violence”, “urban unrest” and
“political militancy” was directed not only against communities of Afro-Caribbean
descent, but also against communities of South Asian descent. This broader focus is also
important for the question of periodisation. According to Solomos (1988: 109), for
instance, it was in response to the confrontations between Black youths and police forces
during the Notting Hill Carnival in August 1976 that the racialised discourse about “urban
unrest” had gained momentum. My case study, however, will show that it was the political
protest dynamics after the murder of Chaggar in June 1976 which had already led to major
public discussions about the alleged resurgence of “race riots”, thus setting the scene for
the public discourse about the Notting Hill Carnival episode. Drawing on the multi-
dimensional crisis-analytical framework outlined above, this growing association of both
Black and Asian residents of urban working-class areas with “crime”, “violence” and
“militancy” can be interpreted as an ideological response not only to the experience of
economic crisis, but also to the growing crisis of legitimacy triggered by the growing

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influence of left-wing social and political movements since the late 1960s. What made
the category of “race” particularly attractive in this context was that the crisis of
legitimacy did not have to be located within British society itself but could be projected
upon vulnerable minority communities who were imagined as outsiders. Within the
social-democratic and liberal segments of public discourse, by contrast, there was a
stronger tendency to regard problems in the area of “race relations”, not as a cause, but
as an effect of the “urban crisis”. For instance, the Guardian commented that ‘[o]ffcial
reports on race relations, on housing, on law and order, on education, on the welfare of
the poor, have come back repeatedly to the same theme – that whole areas, just as much
as individuals, must be identified as disadvantaged and given special aid.’ (Guardian
22/06/73). This explanatory strategy made it possible to express stronger sympathies with
the plight of working-class racialised minority communities. To a certain extent, however,
these newspapers also contributed to the alarmist discourse about crime, violence, and
militancy in racialised minority communities. In a Guardian comment from July 1975,
for instance, the author writes that ‘[t]he disproportionate number of black youths among
the unemployed; the conflict between the police and young disenchanted black people in
the inner cities; and the emergence of race strikes such as occurred in the Mansfield and
Nottingham hosiery mills are only three of the most obvious threats to community
relations.‘ (Guardian 23/07/75)

The late 1960s also saw the rise of a distinct current of populist racism at the right-
wing of the conservative hegemony project that first manifested itself in the context of
Conservative MP Peter Griffiths’ successfully won racist election campaign in
Smethwick in 1964 and gained momentum with the political interventions of Enoch
Powell since the late 1960s. Its key ideological approach was to ideologically displace
the experience of Britain’s world-economic and geo-political decline in the form of ‘an
insular and defensive racism’ (Virdee 2014: 115) that was fixated upon mobilising
paranoid fears about the alleged threat of “non-white” migrants and citizens to the
integrity of the British nation (Gilroy 1987: 104-8; Schofield 2013; Alpion 2014; Virdee
2014: 113-9). 68 Although Powell himself was expelled from the Conservative Party
following his infamous “rivers of blood speech” in April 1968 and afterwards presented
himself as an oppositional force fighting in the name of ‘the people’ against a powerful
political establishment, he continued to exert regular influence on small audiences on the

68
According to reports by Searchlight Magazine, Powellite organisations such as Tory Action were also
involved in disseminating antisemitic propaganda (Searchlight 05/79).

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right-wing of the conservative hegemony project. 69 Furthermore, there were various
moments during which Powell managed to attract major public attention. The above-
discussed discourse about “Asian immigration” was one of them. An especially important
episode was the public debate about a confidential report by Donald Hawley, Assistant
Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, which warned against the alleged danger
of large-scale illegal immigration from South Asia facilitated by an ‘established
“industry” for helping people come to the UK’ based on a ‘web of deceit which is a feature
of many applications’ (cited in Times 25/05/76). The report was leaked by an internal
source to Powell who publicised its contents during a parliamentary speech in May 1976.
In this speech, Powell sought to scandalise the confidential character of the report as
evidence that the government was trying to “cover-up” the actual number of Black and
Asian migrants. According to his own speculations, the current immigration system
would in the near future lead to the situation that ‘one-third of major towns and cities and
industrial areas in our country will be coloured’ (HC Deb 24/05/76: 51). He then
portrayed this as an apocalyptic scenario in which ‘those who live in the areas concerned
[…] see such areas being transformed beyond all recognition, from their own homes and
their own country to places where it is a terror to be obliged to live. (ibid.: 53) Against
this background, he concluded that those “terrorised” white Britons would justifiably
begin to defend themselves which would inevitably lead to a civil war:

I do not know whether it will be tomorrow, or next year, or in five years; but it will
come. That factor is firearms and explosives. With communities which are so divided
nothing can prevent the injection of explosives and firearms with the escalating and
self-augmenting consequences which we know perfectly well from experience in
other parts of the United Kingdom and the world. (ibid.: 53)

These inflammatory comments, which were made less than two weeks before the murder
of Gurdip Singh Chaggar, received widespread public attention throughout the political
landscape. 70 Although they were rejected by many political actors, especially those from
the social-democratic and liberal segments of public discourse, they nonetheless received
approval from a number of leading voices. The Daily Mail, for instance, published a

69
The John Enoch Powell Speech Archive (2018), for instance, documents 539 speeches held in front of
right-wing conservative audiences between April 1968 (“River of blood” speech) and 1979 (the general
election victory of Thatcherism).
70
Between January and May 1976, the four analysed newspapers published at least 41 articles and
comments that were primarily dedicated to Powell’s “cover up” story as well as previous interventions in
the “Malawi-Asian immigration” discourse.

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frontpage article titled ‘Immigrants – How Britain is deceived’ in which Powell was
thanked for sharing his ‘horrifying prophecy of British cities caught in a racial shooting
war’ (Daily Mail 25/05/76). In a letter to the Times, John Stokes, Conservative MP for
Halesowen and Stourbridge, reiterated Powell’s rationalisation of racist hostility and
articulated it more explicitly with the fear about Britain’s economic decline:

[…] this once great nation is now fighting not only for its economic life but also its
national survival. Our best people […] are now increasingly leaving our shores and
in replacement we are receiving mainly uneducated coloured people, many of whom
cannot even speak English. […] The English who are so tolerant cannot be presumed
to be forever so. (cited in Times 27/05/76b)

This remark shows how in Powellite ideology the moments of postcolonial decline (“this
once great nation”) and economic crisis (“fighting not only for its economic life”) were
fused into a crisis of national identity (“national survival”) and projected upon the alleged
civilisational inferiority of racialised minority groups (“uneducated coloured people”).
Finally, it should be mentioned that there was also a minority current of Labour politicians
who drew on Powellite ideology. Bob Mellish, for instance, developed a similar
justification of racist attacks as regrettable yet understandable acts of self-defence and
rebellion against the state’s immigration system:

The problem which we face has been created by other people. The burden falls upon
our backs because we gave British passports to those being expelled. […] We must
try to let the British people see that we are alerted to the problem. […] Unless we do
that, our own people will take action which all of us here will regret. (HC 24/05/76:
45-46)

On the level of state policy, there was a growing emphasis by both Conservative
and Labour governments that the establishment of “racial harmony” is dependent on
tackling the problem of “inner city decline”. Given the different explanatory approaches,
however, there were disagreements as to which state apparatuses should be made
responsible. While the Conservative Party prioritised law-and-order measures over social
and economic policies, the Labour Party prioritised the latter over the former (see
Schofield/Jones 2019: 149-50). Furthermore, the Labour Party acknowledged that
tackling racist discrimination needs to be a part of the state’s response to the socio-
economic plight of racialised minorities. A key legislative initiative of the mid-1970s was
the expansion of the state’s anti-discrimination law. Following a White Paper on “Racial

111
Discrimination” which was published in November 1975, the Labour Party paved the way
for another Race Relations Act which was passed in November 1976. This Act introduced
or strengthened anti-discriminatory regulations in previously neglected areas, such as
employment, education, and charity work, and fused the Race Relations Board and the
Community Relations Commission into one single apparatus, the Commission for Racial
Equality. As the initial White Paper highlights, these legal and institutional changes were
seen as elements of a broader approach that also includes ‘improving the housing,
environment, educational, and employment opportunities of the inner urban areas where
large numbers of coloured families will continue to live for some time to come […]”
(cited in Guardian 05/09/75). However, there was immediate criticism that the latter
measures had remained empty promises so far. In a comment published in the Guardian,
for instance, David Stephen, Director of the Runnymede Trust, welcomed the Labour
Party’s anti-discriminatory stance but criticised that ‘there is, alas, no money to tackle
inner-city poverty yet’ (Guardian 12/09/75). Another issue that was criticised by civil
rights, anti-racist and minority organisations was the Labour leadership’s refusal to
change the racist immigration control regime which in the previous years had been further
entrenched by both Labour (1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act) and Conservative
governments (1971 Immigration Act) (Hansen 1999; Small/Solomos 2006: 243-4). In the
above-discussed parliamentary debate in May 1976, Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins
justified this restrictive stance by drawing on the topos of limited tolerance among the
racialised majority population: ‘In the interests of the immigrant community, the
community as a whole, and good race relations, we need strict immigration control.’ (HC
Deb 20/05/76: 1689) The only serious mainstream-oriented initiative to tackle racist
discrimination was the Joint Committee against Racialism which was founded in 1979
and whose most important achievement was to call on the Home Office to begin
monitoring the extent of “racial attacks” in England and Wales in 1981 (Home Office
1981). However, while the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, and the National Union of the
Conservative Party were affiliates, it was largely composed of counter-hegemonic, extra-
parliamentary minority, religious and civil society organisations, including the Board of
Deputies of British Jews, the Supreme Council of the Sikhs, the Federation of Bangladesh
Associations, the Indian Workers Association, the Standing Conference of Pakistani
Organisations, and the West Indian Standing Conference (CLB MS 2141/C/10).

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5.1.2 Far-right oppositional politics

The rise of Powellism was an important political-ideological precondition for the short
moment of electoral and popular success of British neo-fascism and neo-Nazism. In the
previous chapter, it was demonstrated that these political forces had been largely excluded
from the political mainstream, although their strategy of street violence had a direct
impact upon hegemonic public debates and policymaking processes. With the fusion of
various groups and organisations into the National Front (NF) in 1967, however, a new
organisational base was established that in the following years managed to overcome its
marginalised status (Goodwin 2011: 22-24). In ideological terms, the NF directly drew
on earlier post-war approaches: Its political leaders propagated elements of historical
fascism and Nazism, populist racism and conspiratorial antisemitism, the longing for the
resurgence of the British empire, as well as the rejection of the liberal-democratic
framework of the British state. In order to gain mainstream respectability, however, NF
activists were cautious to utilise these ideological elements in a selective manner. In a
detailed study of NF ideology, for instance, Billig demonstrates that antisemitic
conspiracy theories were largely confined to internal debates, whereas public
interventions were motivated by the attempt to capitalise on Powellite racism (Billig
1977: 62-192). Throughout the 1970s, the NF put an explicit focus on organising public
demonstrates against “Asian immigration” and “mugging” (see Copsey 2000: 123-30).
Another target of NF mobilisation were Muslim communities (see Guardian 05/11/71,
27/09/76; Searchlight 1977b). Similar choices were made on a strategic level: On the one
hand, the NF attempted to present itself as a respectable electoral force that gives an
expression to the growing milieu of Powell supporters at the right wing of the
conservative hegemony project. For a short period, this electoral strategy was successful.
The NF gradually increased its electoral influence which reached its apex in the mid-
1970s. During the general elections in February and October 1974, it fielded 54 and 90
candidates who won 76,865 and 113,843 votes, which is an average of 3.2% and 3.1% in
the contested seats (Goodwin 2011: 30). During the 1977 local elections, it managed to
win nearly a quarter of million votes (Copsey/Worley 2018: 2). On the other hand, this
shift towards electoral politics has not led to the decline in the established practice of
inciting and perpetrating violence. Quite the contrary, it was during the 1970s that the
number of racist and antisemitic attacks by NF and other far-right activists and
sympathisers strongly increased (Miles/Phizacklea 1984: 124-5; Searchlight 06/78,
12/78). This also included moments of collective violence, such an attack by around 50

113
NF activists on people attending a meeting of the National Council for Civil Liberties
(Copsey 2000: 124), as well as arson and bomb attacks on Black, Asian, and Jewish
private homes, business premises, places of worship, and other community institutions
(Searchlight 1977a, 1977c, 10/78: 4, 03/79: 7, 11/79: 17). There is also evidence to
suggest that the NF continued the strategy of creating an atmosphere of fear and terror in
exactly those urban spaces which were at the heart of mainstream debates about “race
relations” and “urban decline”. In Southall, for instance, it was far-right organisations
such as the Southall Residents’ Association and the British National Party that sought to
create a climate of fear throughout the 1960s (CARF/Southall Rights 1981: 25-26, 35).
The NF, too, developed a concerted strategy of public mobilisation and street violence in
the Southall area (Bowling 1998: 39-42; Ramamurthy 2013: 22-29).

5.1.3 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional politics

In light of this hostile political climate as well as the absence of any serious police and
criminal justice initiatives in order to protect racialised minorities from harassment and
attacks, it is impressive yet unsurprising that the period between the late 1960s and late
1970s saw the emergence of a plethora of minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist political
organisations. In the following, I will highlight those directly involved in the struggle
against racist violence: First, there were anti-racist research and monitoring projects such
as the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) which in April 1972 had undergone a ‘radical
transformation […] from a policy-oriented, establishment, academic institution into an
anti-racist “thinktank”’ (IRR 2020), or the anti-fascist Searchlight Magazine which was
formed in 1975. Second, various Black Power organisations emerged between the mid-
1960s and early 1970s (Angelo 2009; Bunce/Field 2015: 27-42; Shukra 1998: 31-43;
Sivanandan 2008: 103-113; Wild 2015: 29-31). Third, various self-defence committees
formed against police and judicial repression, such as the Mangrove Nine, Oval House
Four and Old Bailey Three campaigns (Bunce/Field 2015: 119-135, 171-175). Fourth, a
distinct strand of Black women’s groups emerged in response to the problems of male
dominance in the area of Black politics and white dominance in the area of feminist
politics (Bryan et al. 2018: 140-64; Thomlinson 2016: 170-199). And fifth, two large-
scale anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigns, Rock against Racism (RaR) (1976) and the
Anti-Nazi League (ANL) (1977), focused on the strategy of mass mobilisation against
the growing threat of the NF and in the late 1970s attracted the support of tens of

114
thousands of people and as well as a wide range of mainstream political actors (Renton
2018; Virdee 2014: 130-144). Against this background, it is indeed no exaggeration to
state that the 1970s witnessed ‘the formation of an anti-racist, anti-fascist social
movement in Britain [which] was unprecedented in scale and scope that remains unseen
anywhere on the European mainland to this day.’ (Virdee 2014: 124) 71 At the same time,
however, there was still considerable potential for internal disagreement. This can be
illustrated by looking at two different communal responses to the ANL. First, there was
disagreement among Jewish political organisations about the ANL’s strategic and
political approach. On the one hand, were various Jewish individuals (such as
Searchlight’s Maurice Ludmer) and organisations (such as the Union of Jewish Students)
were involved in the ANL because they considered it an important campaign against the
growing threat of fascism, racism, and antisemitism (Renton 2018: 97; Virdee 2014: 142).
On the other hand, there were organisations such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews
that refused to cooperate with certain ANL affiliates, in particular the Socialist Workers’
Party which was rejected not only because of its left-wing militancy but also because of
its anti-Zionist world view (see Searchlight 01/79; Guardian 03/11/78; Renton 2018: 100-
01). Second, various community-based Black Power, anti-racist and anti-fascist groups
criticised the ANL for its limited focus on spectacular mass events at the cost of providing
support for local initiatives, as well as for its lack of attention to the problem of racist
state repression and police violence (Copsey 2000: 137-9). A particularly strong critique
was formulated by the Black Power group Race Today Collective which characterised
the ANL as an example of state-centric, middle-class based paternalism. In a discussion
of the strike activity of Bengali workers in London’s East End in 1978, for instance, the
Race Today Collective commented that

[t]his militant thrust towards independent self-organisation had always to contend

with various opportunist elements in and around the community. In recent months
these elements have come together in a loose alliance, consisting of middle-class
Asians, white left vanguard parties, race-relations and labour movement hacks.
Under the guise of multi-racialism, they have made a vain bid for control. (Race
Today 07+08/78a; see also Race Today 05+06/79: 52-54)

71
I at least want to mention that it was also in the mid-1960s that the Gypsy Council was formed, the first
representative body that sought to ‘gain social justice, along with education, accommodation and civil rights
for the Gypsy and Traveller community’ (Friends, Families and Travellers 2022; see also Observer
07/06/70).

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Overall, then, the 1970s saw the formation of a complex configuration of minority, anti-
racist and anti-fascist political actors. The following case study will make a contribution
to examining the specific role which the politicisation of deadly racist violence played
within this broader configuration.

5.2 Case study: The political conflicts over the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in
Southall, 1976-1977

It was in this context of an ongoing racist public discourse about Black and Asian
migration and settlement as well as the growing mainstream influence of right-wing
populist and neo-fascist political forces that racist violence became an endemic problem
in 1970s Britain. At the same time, the reconfigured field of minority, anti-racist and anti-
fascist politics led to new attempts to fight against this increasingly violent and deadly
political atmosphere. In this section, I will develop an exemplary analysis of one case
which was the most impactful, in particular in terms of anti-racist and minority protest
dynamics as well as mainstream media debates: the racist murder of Gurdip Singh
Chaggar in Southall in June 1976. Although this case became a highly publicised and
politicised issue, it is striking that it has rarely been analysed in great detail and in a more
comprehensive manner. Looking at authoritative studies of the politics of (anti-)racism in
contemporary British history, the case is either not mentioned at all, or only appears in
minor comments (see for example Bland 2019: 163-64; CCCS 1982: 120, 158; Fryer
2010: 395; Hall et al. 2013: 337; Solomos 2003: 135; Waters 2018: 77). An exception is
Ramamurthy’s detailed study of the Asian Youth Movements which have formed in
response to the murder of Chaggar. Apart from short remarks, however, this study does
not discuss the immediate political struggles over the Chaggar case in great detail either
(Ramamurthy 2013: 42). Furthermore, there was a much broader set of minority, anti-
racist, and anti-fascist actors that have been involved in these struggles. Finally, the
hegemonic political and media responses to this case have not yet been examined in
systematic manner and with a broader socio-historical perspective.

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5.2.1 The case of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in the context of racist violence in the late
1960s and 1970s

It was in the above-discussed climate of racist violence and intimidation, surrounded by

racialised discourses about “Asian immigration” and “urban decline”, that Gurdip Singh
Chaggar, an 18-year-old young man who lived in Southall and studied at the Southall
College of Technology, was killed. In the evening of 4 June 1976, he was on his way
home from the Century Cinema at The Green in central Southall. In front of the nearby
Victory Pub, he and several companions were provoked by a group of at least of five
youths who then stabbed him to death. He died of four stab wounds in the chest and the
back. During this incident, the youths also stabbed and injured Gurcharan Singh Mahal
and Rashpal Singh Bilkhu (Guardian 21/04/1977).

His brutal death was only one of many that had occurred in the 1970s and had
occurred within a widespread climate of racist harassment and violence. In one of the
most comprehensive empirical overviews of racist violence in post-war Britain, Bowling
concludes that in the beginning of the 1970s ‘there was a real upsurge in violent racism’
(Bowling 1998: 42) which during the late 1970s ‘became more open and explicit than
hitherto’ (ibid.: 56). The anti-racist campaigners Jan Shinebourne, Balvinder Gill and
Suresh Grover come to a similar conclusion in the feminist magazine The Rib in 1990:

During that period state racism, and racist sections of the white community, allied
powerfully to set in motion a train of violence. The years which preceded the killing
of Gurdip Singh Chaggar, in 1976, had seen a huge growth in racial violence against
Black people. […] It became a national sport to beat up “Pakis”, as all Asian people
were called. 1971 to 1976 was the “Paki-bashing“ era. Gurdip Chaggar was a victim
of the situation. (cited in: GPIA EAC-4-2-7-5)

According to the RTC, there were at least 23 incidents of ‘the most serious and violent
attacks inflicted on Asians in the East End of London’ between March and May 1976
(Race Today 07+08/78b). It was also in this period that racist murder cases became a
regular occurrence. Although the murder of Chaggar was sometimes ‘[s]een symbolically
as the first racial killing’, as was reported by The Independent Magazine in 1990 (cited
in GPIA EAC/04/02/07/01), it is more accurate to understand it as one example in a series
of deadly violence against Black and Asian people in the early 1970s. On 21 May 1976,
for instance, a group of four white youths fatally stabbed two South Asian engineering
students, Dinesh Choudhury and Ribhi Al Haddida, in Redbridge, East London (Guardian

117
26/05/76; CARF/Southall Rights 1981: 51; Bowling 1998: 43). In the previous years there
had been other murder cases that have been officially confirmed as or have raised
accusations of violent racism. Ashe et al. (2016: 39) reconstruct the events leading to and
following the murder of Tosir Ali in the East End of London in 1970. Gordon (1990: 8)
documents three racist killings in Coventry, Leicester, and Birmingham in 1973, as well
as two racist killings in South London and Glasgow in 1975. Ramamurthy (2013: 12)
mentions the murder of two Pakistani residents in East London in 1969 and 1971. Based
on an evaluation of official and activist evidence, Bowling argues that this atmosphere of
racist violence emerged as a result of both organised neo-fascist activity as well as an
underlying everyday culture of racist hostility that was amplified in the area of hegemonic
public discourse (Bowling 1998: 42-45). Other authors add that it was especially in this
period that racist violence increasingly entered the institutional and operational
framework of the state (IRR 1979; 1987; 1991; Miles/Phizacklea 1984; Sivanandan
2008). The first documented death of a Black person which has been associated with
police involvement dates back to the late 1960s: In April 1969, David Oluwale was found
dead in Leeds after he had been repeatedly harassed and assaulted by local police officers
(IRR 1991: 6-8). According to the IRR, there are many other deaths in state custody which
in the first half of the 1970s have led to accusations of racist police harassment and/or
violence, including the cases of Andre Savvas at Hornsey Police Station in
Haringey/London (April 1971), Aseta Simms at Stoke Newington Police Station in
Hackney/London (May 1971), Lil‘ Douza at Oxford Detention Centre (1972); Horace
Bailey at Ashford Remand Centre (November 1973); Stephen Bernard in Ladywell Police
Station Lewisham (February 1974); Joseph Lawrence in Brixton Prison (May 1974) and
John Lameletie in Hornsey Police Station (May 1974) (IRR 1991).

5.2.2 Police investigation and criminal prosecution

In the aftermath of the killing, a police investigation was initiated that was characterised
by crucial shortcomings and selectivities, in particular on an ideological and repressive
level. There is testimonial evidence that suggests that the second stage of the police
investigation, ‘the initial response and reporting of the incident by a “mobile unit” or
relief officer’ (Bowling 1998: 261), was characterised by an attitude of racist indifference.
In 2015, a BBC journalist carried out an interview with Suresh Grover who is a founding
member of the Southall Monitoring Group (1981) and witnessed the initial police

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behaviour at the crime scene. The article summarises Grover’s recollection of the incident
in the following way:

On 4 June 1976, Suresh, then aged 22, came across a pool of blood on the pavement.
He asked a police officer standing by it what had happened and was told someone
had died the previous night - he remembers his exact words - it was just an Asian.
Suresh was furious at the policeman's dismissive attitude. He went to get a piece of
red cloth to cover the blood. He put bricks around it so no-one would walk on it, as
a sign of respect. He erected a makeshift sign saying someone had died. (BBC
05/08/2015; see also Bland 2019: 163-64)

Unlike the murder case of Kelso Cochrane, the investigating police unit was able to
identify, arrest and charge five youths with the murder of Chaggar and with causing an
affray (Guardian 10/06/76b). 72 Looking at the question of racism as a potential
motivation, however, the police and judicial responses were again characterised by an
attitude of denial. Furthermore, the decisions of the police investigators were clearly
informed by the equalising notion of “race conflict” which assumes that both racialised
majority and minority groups are responsible for such incidents of violence. Accordingly,
Southall Police Department not only focused on the five white youths, but also arrested
and charged five Asian youths with causing an affray (Guardian 10/06/76a). According
to The Observer, the leading police investigator Jim Sewell ‘did not think there were any
racial overtones.’ (Observer 06/06/76; see also Daily Mirror 07/06/76a) It is noteworthy
that he came to the conclusion only two days after the murder and even before the search
for witnesses was finished. In the same article, however, Kalwant Singh, one of the
defendants, was quoted as stating that: ‘[i]t must be racial violence. There is no other
reason for it. There was no fighting going on.’ (ibid.) During a press conference that was
held on the occasion of the Metropolitan Police’s annual report only days after the murder
of Chaggar, Commissioner Robert Mark contributed to the justification of such a denialist
stance on racism. According to the Daily Mirror, he openly attacked the press for
misleading the public about racism as a potential motive for the murder of Chaggar:
‘What right have you to say on the basis of what you know about that incident that there
is any evidence it has racial connotations?” (cited in Daily Mirror 10/06/76; see also
Guardian 10/06/76b).

72
According to news reports, the police was also looking ‘for two or three more people’ (Times 08/06/76)
or even ‘between eight and twelve more youths in connection with the killing’ (Daily Mirror 08/06/76a)
but eventually failed to identify these suspects.

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 Between April and May 1977, ten defendants stood trial at the Central Criminal
Court in London. Two white youths, Jody Hill and Robert Hackman, having previously
changed their pleas to ‘guilty of manslaughter’, were accordingly convicted and jailed for
four years. Of the other three white defendants, one was given a six-month suspended
prison sentence and two were discharged. Of the five Asian defendants, two were given
a six-month prison sentence (in one case suspended), two received deferred sentences and
one was discharged (Guardian 03/05/77, 10/05/77). The police story was strongly
reinforced during the criminal trial. During the opening, the prosecution interpreted the
altercation leading to Chaggar’s death as an example of “gang violence” and thereby ruled
out the possibility of racist victimisation as a relevant factor. According to The Guardian,
the prosecutor Brian Leary stated that ‘English and Asian youths brought terror to a
shopping centre as they battled in deadly violence one summer evening’, and further
emphasised that ‘the members of the Asian gang were willing and active participants in
the affray’ (cited in Guardian 21/04/77). Hence, although the altercation resulted in three
of the five Asian youths being stabbed, the blame was laid on both sides. The possibility
that Chaggar and his companion acted in self-defence was dispelled, and this assumption
was further justified by criminalising them as a “gang”. The denial of racism as an
underlying motive was also reinforced during the concluding statement by Judge Neil
Lawson: ‘It is quite clear that this was not, as some people represented it, a racial riot’
(cited in Times 03/05/77). He further stated with regard to the motivation of those
convicted of manslaughter: ‘I am quite satisfied that neither of you were activated by
feelings of racial prejudice.’ (ibid.) This suggests that what Bowling and Phillip call the
distinction between the ‘de jure’ and ‘de facto’ level of discrimination was denied by the
judge (Bowling/Phillips 2001: 39): Instead of stating that no judicial evidence of a racist
motivation was found, the judge presented the absence of “racial prejudice” as a fact.
However, even if the investigating authorities had thoroughly looked for and did not find
any evidence of “racial prejudice”, this does not mean that it had not actually played a
role. What is more, there were strong indications that the police did not thoroughly
investigate the matter of racism. Looking at the underlying imagery that was used in order
to characterise the murder incident, it can be argued that the police investigation and
criminal prosecution were directly informed by the “urban crisis” discourse analysed in
the previous section. It did not take the investigating and prosecuting state personnel
much time and effort to interpret the murder incident as a typical example of violent
confrontation between delinquent youths who tend to “gang”-types of group behaviour

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and spread fear and terror in one London’s inner-city areas. At the same time, however,
there was a certain ambivalence about the “racial” character of the case. While “race” was
indeed strongly denied as an underlying factor, both groups were nonetheless primarily
referred to in terms of racialised distinctions (“Asian gang”; “English and Asian youths”).
One way to interpret this dynamic would be to suggest that the denial of a “racial element”
primarily served the function of exonerating the perpetrators from the charge of racism.
Furthermore, the judge’s above-mentioned claim that “this was not, as some people
represented it, a racial riot” can also be interpreted as an attempt to depoliticise the issue
and thus mitigate the potential for further political debate and conflict. If this was the
judge’s motivation, however, the image of “racial riots” was nonetheless implicitly
present – namely as a potential threat in the future. As will be discussed further below,
the mainstream media discourse was not characterised by such a reluctance to use “race”
as a signifier.

5.2.3 Minority and anti-racist responses

Both the murder of Chaggar and the broader climate of racist provocation, harassment
and victimisation led to a wide range of protest activities in the second half of the 1970s.
In the Southall area these responses were rooted in a longer trajectory of political
opposition that goes back to the formative moments of Black and Asian self-organisation
discussed in the previous chapter. It was already in the 1950s that organisations such as
the Indian Workers’ Association and the Indo-Pakistan Cultural Society played a
significant role in the politicisation of racism in areas of housing, welfare, education, and
policing (CARF/Southall 1981: 23-44). The 1950s and 1960s also saw a series of strikes
actions of Asian workers from Southall who combined the protest at poor working and
living conditions with the fight against racist discrimination at the workplace. Many of
these strike episodes were organised and led by female workers who were facing
especially precarious working conditions (ibid.: 11-22) Finally, Southall became an
important locality for the establishment of wider political campaigns and alliances. For
instance, it was in Southall’s Dominion Cinema that the Campaign against Racial
Discrimination, the West Indian Standing Conference, and the Indian Workers’
Association came together in 1967 to form the Joint Council for the Welfare of
Immigrants (ibid.: 37). Looking at other parts of London, there had also been first signs
of a growing politicisation of incidents of racist violence. According to an illuminating

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study by Ashe et al. (2016), the racist murder of Tosir Ali in London’s East End led to a
sequence of anti-racist protest activities. More specifically, they identify a political
tension between an ‘integrationist approach’ and an ‘autonomous approach’ (ibid.: 37).
The former, which was prioritised by local white politicians and established community
organisations such as the Pakistani Welfare Association and the National Federation of
Pakistani Associations, ‘sought to forge a collaborative relationship between the political
establishment, existing state structures and sections of civil society, and thereby
assimilate the recently settled Pakistani migrant community into the so-called ‘British
values’ of law and order and the authority of the police.’ (ibid.) The latter, which was
chosen by a ‘multiethnic coalition of Black Power groups, anti-imperialists and socialists’
(ibid.: 37-38) including the Pakistani Progressive Party and Pakistani Workers’ Union,
positioned itself not only against the ‘authority of the police’ (ibid.: 38), but also against
‘the authority of the established political leadership in Tower Hamlets at both local state
and civil society levels’ (ibid.). Its key strategic approach was to promote self-defence as
the only viable option in a political climate of indifference, impunity, and complicity.
While Ashe et al. assert that this tension would ‘surface again’ (ibid.: 3) not until the
struggles against neo-fascist threats in Lewisham in 1977 and Southall in 1979, I will
show that these debates and conflicts already shaped the protest dynamics in Southall in
1976.

The murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar led to widespread protest dynamics which
included a wide range of primarily Black and Asian political actors (and a small number
of white left-wing political actors). This included public campaigning and pressure
activity which had already been a key feature of previous struggles since the murder of
Kelso Cochrane. Established minority organisations such as the Standing Conference of
Asian Organisations, the Standing Conference of Pakistani Organisations, the Indian
Workers‘ Association, the National Association of Indian Youth and the West Indian
Standing Conference made concerted efforts to raise public attention to the case and the
wider issue of racist violence and harassment by which their communities were affected. 73
These also included explicit condemnations of both Powell’s recent provocation as well
as the threat of neo-fascist violence in Southall. For instance, Joe Hunte from the West
Indian Standing Conference reported to the press that Powell ‘is predicting violence, and

73
According to The Times, there was also an international dimension to this pressure activity: In June 1976,
the Pakistani government minister Kausar Niazi announced to visit London and meet with both British
government officials and British-Asian community leaders. In the end, however, the Pakistani government
cancelled this visit (Times 14/06/76, 28/06/76)

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the National Front and the Monday Club are trying to make it come true. […] Then Powell
can say “I told you so.” But we will defuse this race-hate time bomb.’ (cited in Daily
Mirror 08/06/76b). There were also various liberal-reformist civil society actors that made
similar interventions, such as the civil rights organisation Runnymede Trust (Guardian
05/01/77), as well as a coalition of Sikh, Hindu, and Christian religious leaders (Times
30/06/76) Particularly noteworthy is that these organisations began to call for the
establishment of a public inquiry, which had not been done in the context of the Cochrane
case (Times 11/06/76, 05/07/76). This suggests that there was a growing interest not only
to appeal to state actors from the outside, but also to influence and enter its institutional
framework itself. Another strategic response which had become increasingly important
since the late 1960s was the immediate organisation of protest rallies. On 6 June 1976,
several hundred people participated in a protest demonstration in Southall over the course
of which two people were arrested by the police. This incident led to another protest rally
in front of Southall police station during which more than 200 people demanded the
release of the arrested persons, as well as the arrest of Chaggar’s murderers (Ramamurthy
2013: 52). On 7 June 1976, more than 100 Asian students from the Southall College of
Technology took the streets, followed by a larger demonstration in Southall with more
than 2,000 participants (Guardian 08/06/76a). During these demonstrations, the Asian
Socialist Forum handed out leaflets declaring ‘Racial Murder’ (Ramamurthy 2013: 26).
On 4 July 1976, more than 1,000 people attended Chaggar’s public funeral. Many shop
owners from Southall’s Asian community closed their shops in solidarity with the
bereaved family (Observer 04/07/76). According to press coverage, there were two more
protest marches in early and late July 1977, one with ‘about 750 Asians and International
Socialists’ (Observer 25/07/76; see also Ramamurthy 2013: 28). A third strategic
response was to form new organisations. On the one hand, this included organisations
whose strategic approach can be characterised as ‘integrationist’ (Ashe et al. 2016: 37).
Only two days after the murder incident, for instance, more than 600 representatives and
activists held an emergency meeting and formed the Asian Action Committee (AAC), an
umbrella organisation representing 35 British Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi
organisations (Guardian 07/06/76; Times 14/06/76). On 4 July 1976, the AAC handed a
memorandum to the British government, demanding, amongst other things, a public
inquiry into ‘racial violence, its deeper causes and the illegal activities of racist bodies’
(cited in: Times 05/07/76), ‘effective government action in prosecuting those who incite
racial hatred’ (cited in ibid.), and the repeal of the 1971 Immigration Act. On the other

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hand, the Chaggar case became an important moment for the strengthening of
‘autonomous’ approaches (Ashe et al. 2016: 37). Only one day after the murder, a group
of activists that had been involved in the immediate street protests formed the Southall
Youth Movement (SYM), which would become an influential force in the establishment
of numerous Asian Youth Movements (AYM) which in the following years organised
protest activities throughout Britain (Ramamurthy 2013: 25-29). The key slogans that
were used by the AYMs – “Come what may, we are here to stay” and “Here to stay, here
to fight” – were in fact not radically different from those of more established communal
organisations. According to Ramamurthy, they were an expression of demand for ‘[t]he
right to live in Britain in peace and without victimisation’ (Ramamurthy 2006: 46) In
strategic terms, however, they embarked upon a different route. Although there is some
evidence that those established organisations openly supported self-defence strategies in
the mid-1970s, their strategic approach was primarily focused on conventional pressure
group and lobby activities. 74 The AYMs, on the other hand, saw the necessity to organise
practical self-defence and collective resistance to violent racism on the streets
(CARF/Southall Rights 1981: 51-54). 75 Ramamurthy argues that this relation between
these emerging factions had been a conflictual, but nevertheless solidary one. Using the
example of the Indian Workers’ Association, he remarks that the AYMs

contrasted with for example the moderate, Labour Party focused approach of IWA
(Southall) and the more trade union centred approach of IWA in Bradford. The IWA
in Bradford however was to support the youth in the development of their
organisation, indicating a complex relationship of influence and conflict between the
new youth movements and the IWAs. (ibid.: 29)

Overall, this shows that the protest dynamics following the murder of Chaggar were an
important moment during which the influence of confrontational approaches was
strengthened, while policy-oriented pressure group activities remained equally
influential. In this sense, the strategic dualism which had begun to shape minority-led,
anti-racist and anti-fascist politics in the post-1958 moment and in particular since the
late 1960s was further consolidated. An especially striking feature of the AYMs was their
scope. In the field of moderate anti-racism, there have had already been attempts to

74
At a meeting in Birmingham on 1 June 1976, representatives of 120 Pakistani organisations decided on
the policy of ‘active self-defence’ (cited in Guardian 01/06/76).
75
Such a call for self-defence in response to the murder of Chaggar was also made by other organisations
such as the Race Today Collective and the recently formed Anti-Racist Committee of Asians in East
London (Race Today 07+08/78b, 09+10/78).

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establish nation-wide campaigns that go back to the early 1960s. In the area of
autonomous politics, on the other hand, this was only a quite recent and still emerging
phenomenon. In addition to parallel developments in the field of anti-fascism (Renton
2006), the AYMs can thus be regarded as one of the first attempts to connected different
local fights against racism and racist violence throughout Britain. As we will see in the
next chapter, such an endeavour was taken up again in the context of the New Cross
Massacre Campaign in 1981.

5.2.4 Hegemonic political and media responses

The hegemonic political responses showed a strong tendency to prioritise the political
protest dynamics after the murder over the murder itself. It was the political protests, but
not the death of Chaggar, which made headlines in the analysed newspapers over the
following days, including ‘Danger in race situation’ (Guardian 10/06/76b), ‘Asians clash
with police in protest over killing’ (Times 07/06/76), ‘Race riot is quelled’ (Daily Mail
07/06/76a), ‘A hot, violent afternoon’ (Daily Mail 07/06/76a), or ‘Rampage of
vengeance’ (Daily Mirror 07/06/76a). One of the key images that was drawn in order to
make sense of these protest dynamics was that of “racial conflict” and “race riot” which,
as was discussed earlier in this as well as the previous chapter, had become highly
influential in the aftermath of the 1958 racist riots in Notting Hill and Nottingham. The
Daily Mail portrayed the protesting youths as blood-thirsty gangs acting from revenge
and hatred of the police and white people: ‘Race hatred exploded early in the afternoon
when police clashed with hundreds of stone-throwing Indians running through Southall
chanting ‘Blood, blood, blood. […] groups of young Asians, inflamed at the murder of a
Pakistani by – they believed – a gang of white youths, turned the London suburb of
Southall into a seething area of hatred and suspicion” (Daily Mail 07/06/76a) As a result,
it was concluded, ‘Britain came to the brink of its ugliest race riot for 20 years yesterday‘
(ibid.). The Daily Mirror wrote in a similar way that “Racial violence erupted in London
yesterday as hundreds of Asians took to the streets on a rampage of violence. Screaming
“blood for blood” they beat up Whites, battled with police, and attacked cars. […] It was
the worst racial violence since the Notting Hill riots eighteen years ago.‘ (Daily Mirror
07/06/76a) By calling the protests an ‘Asian mutiny’ (Daily Mirror 07/06/76b), it is likely
that the Daily Mirror attempted to mobilise anxieties and resentments about the Indian
uprising in 1857-8 as a symbol of resistance to the British Empire (for a similar

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interpretation, see Bland 2019: 177). The initial Times, Observer and Guardian coverage
was less sensationalist and more attentive to the murder of Chaggar and the climate of
racist violence, but nonetheless contributed to the portrayal of the protests as an ‘outbreak
of violent racial confrontation’ (Times 09/06/76a), ‘a racial gang battle’ (Observer
06/06/76), or an incident of ‘Racial tensions’ (Guardian 07/06/76) that ‘was at times a
riot’ (ibid.). The Times also compared the protests with the 1958 racist riots (Times
09/06/76a) This historical comparison is particularly remarkable because it shows that
two quite different sorts of events – unprovoked racist violence and public protests against
racist violence – were equated with each other and integrated into one single history of
“race riots”. The political effect of this direct comparison between 1958 and 1976, Notting
Hill and Southall, was doubly problematic: On the one hand, the threat of racist violence
was relativised because it was not understood as an unprovoked act of aggression, but
rather as a reaction to already existing “racial tensions”. On the other hand, the practice
of anti-racist mobilisation was demonised as a form of racist perpetration itself. While on
a referential and normative level there was strong agreement that a condemnable “race
riot” had occurred in Southall, there was more uncertainty, in some parts of the news
discourse at least, about the underlying explanation. For some commentators, it was
indeed surprising that what they thought to be a “race riot” had occurred in Southall. This
was usually underpinned by essentialist distinctions between South Asian and Afro-
Caribbean communities: While the latter were portrayed as culturally dysfunctional,
economically weak, and politically disruptive, the latter were portrayed as culturally
integral, economically diligent, and politically conformist. For example, the Daily Mirror
commented that ‘[i]t is unprecedented for the Asians of Southall – or the Asians of
anywhere else for that matter – to lose their heads and take to the streets. This West
London suburb, with possibly the most dense concentration of immigrants in Britain, has
never been as potentially explosive as some West Indian communities.’ (Daily Mirror
07/06/76b) In a background article on the Southall area, the Daily Mail wrote about ‘[t]he
determined hard workers of “Little India”’ (Daily Mail 07/06/76b). In these accounts, the
main explanation of the “race riots” was the assumption that the older generation, with its
alleged traditionalism and conformism, tends to lose control of a younger generation
which has begun to show behavioural patterns similar to Black youths (drawing on classic
colonial images of flawed upbringing and deficient education). In a background article
titled “The effort must come from the minorities themselves’ (Times 31/07/76), the Times
wrote that ‘Young Asians, no longer restrained by the traditions of their parents, are also

126
beginning to have brushes with the police.’ (ibid.) The Daily Mail claimed that ‘the
inherent sense of law abiding order which is the hallmark of the Asian community’ was
seriously challenged, but in the last moment managed to calm ‘the passions of the street
mob’ (Daily Mail 07/06/76c). Other commentators, however, found it less difficult to
situate the “race riot” in a context of “urban decay”. In another Times article, for instance,
Southall is portrayed as one of ‘the shabby industrial suburbs of West London’ (Times
09/06/76b) which following South Asian immigration ‘has changed from a small, neat
and clean village in the country into a foreign town.’ (ibid.) For the Daily Mirror, the
Southall protests have revealed that ‘the tension generated in the coloured community –
especially over jobs and housing – could fuel a new explosion of violence.’ (Daily Mirror
10/06/76). Another interesting example is a Guardian reportage on the Asian community
in Southall and the Black community in Brixton which was published several days before
the murder of Chaggar. By comparing these two areas, the author claimed to show that
‘immigrants are not the unified group they tend to appear from the controversial
statements about them’ (Guardian 29/05/76). The article’s title ‘A tale of two ghettoes’
(ibid.), however, reveals that the author is only able to see different variants of one and
the same problem of “ghetto life”. Furthermore, the author claims to put into question the
distinction between a functional Asian and dysfunctional Black family life, but only to
conclude that both tend to be dysfunctional: ‘the belief that there are no conflicts in Asian
families is too facile.’ (ibid.).

The party political and official government responses to the murder of Chaggar
were rudimentary. Following an intervention by left-wing Labour politician Christopher
Price, Prime Minister Callaghan expressed sympathies for the South Asian community,
portraying them as ‘extremely industrious and hard-working citizens’ which ‘therefore
are entitled to live without fear, as are other citizens in this country.’ (HC Deb 15/06/76:
304) Immediately afterwards, he stated that ‘urban deprivation in inner cities’ (ibid.) is
‘one of the festering cankers that we shall have to remove’ (ibid.) but added that in a
moment of economic crisis this ‘is a question of priorities’ (ibid.) While Callaghan
refused to meet local community leaders in Southall (Guardian 09/06/76), Home
Secretary Jenkins did so a couple of days after the murder (Guardian 10/06/76a). Overall,
however, these government responses turned out to be nothing more than symbolic
gestures. Most notably, the government defended the existing police and criminal justice
approach to racist violence and refused to establish a public inquiry (Guardian 22/06/76).
From a government perspective, then, the matter was essentially closed without any

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consequences after less than a month. 76 Particularly worrying was a scandal about John
Kingsley-Read, chairman of the neo-fascist National Party, who in a public speech in
June 1976 referred to the murder of Chaggar by stating: ‘That was terribly unfortunate.
One down, one million to go.’ (cited in Guardian 14/06/76). He was charged for
“incitement of racial hatred”, but during a first trial in January 1978 the jury failed to
agree on a verdict (Guardian 05/01/78). During a re-trial in the same month, he was
eventually acquitted (Observer 15/01/78). For minority and anti-racist actors, this incident
confirmed their suspicion that no serious protection could be expected from the state and
its criminal justice system.

5.3 Conclusion

In this chapter, I examined the changing patterns of political conflicts over racist violence
in the moment of ongoing and intensifying socio-economic and geo-political
developments that in public discourse were predominantly interpreted as crisis
phenomena. While the ongoing process of (post-)imperial geo-political and world-
economic decline continued to appear as recurrent themes in hegemonic public
discourses, the global economic recession of the mid-1970s provided further potential for
publicly expressed anxieties about Britain’s socio-economic and political stability. A key
mode of visualising these complex processes in rhetorically simple and emotionally
gripping form was to focus on the problems and dangers of the “inner city”. While this
focus is indeed an accurate reflection of deep-seated and intensifying socio-geographical
disparities, there was a strong tendency in hegemonic political debates to isolate this
localised crisis phenomenon from its societal conditions of existence. A third
development was the growing influence of ‘centrifugal forces’ (Marcuse 1991: 37) that
were located outside of, and began to put into question, established forms of political
representation and hegemony formation, particularly traditionalist value systems and
corporatist modes of conflict resolution. In the context of an exemplary discourse
analysis, I demonstrated that “race” played an increasingly important role for all those
political actors who refused to confront the past horrors committed in the name of the
British Empire and searched for ways to personalise and externalise the structural
problems of contemporary British society by projecting them onto small vulnerable

76
It is also noteworthy that the Chaggar case did not attracted further parliamentary attention apart from
the already mentioned Q&A session.

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groups who were most affected by their negative social repercussions. More specifically,
racialised minorities were ideologically constructed not only as invasion of “British”
territory” from the former colonies, but also as an economic burden and source of conflict
within Britain’s inner cities. What is more, the increasingly self-conscious and forceful
public presence of a younger generation of Black and Asian activists was interpreted
across the political landscape, but especially by right-wing commentators, as a major
cause of Britain’s political instability. In the literature there is a tendency to characterise
the late 1960s and early 1970s as the starting point of such racialised discourses. As was
discussed in the previous chapter, however, they had already emerged in the first two
post-war decades. Thus, not much ideological work was required in order to re-articulate
them under the specific circumstances of the late 1960s and early 1970s. What has
changed, however, was the scope and intensity of the ideological association between
“race relations”, “urban decline” and “collective violence”. What is more, it was in this
period that the political landscape has seen the rise of Powellism as well as the resurgence
of neo-fascism – two political currents which positioned themselves against the political
mainstream but also strongly benefited from its neo-racist discourses. It needs to be
stressed, however, that racism was not the only dominant response. In the mid-1970s, for
instance, liberal and social-democratic politicians managed to strengthen anti-
discriminatory state responses in the form of the Race Relations Act 1976. But the impact
of such initiatives on tackling the rising climate of racist violence (and the underlying
culture of indifference) was limited and belated.

The murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar became an important moment in these

broader political shifts throughout the 1970s. Within Southall and beyond, Chaggar’s
death has led to far-reaching and longstanding protest dynamics with a significant impact
on the wider field of minority and anti-racist politics. Particularly important in this regard
was the formation of the AYMs which, after the moment of Black Power politics a couple
of years earlier, represented an influential attempt to push the field of minority and anti-
racist politics in the direction of mobilisational and confrontational approaches. This did
not occur in a political vacuum but was aligned with other developments such as the
growing importance of strategies of mass mobilisation in the area of anti-fascist politics.
In addition to the AYMs, there were also other communal responses such as the formation
of the AAC, an umbrella organisation which played a key role in facilitating protest
dynamics, raising public awareness to the Chaggar murder, and putting pressure on the
Labour government to establish a public inquiry. What was missing, however, was a

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family-led justice campaign as well as direct interventions in the police investigations and
criminal prosecutions.

All these protest actors were confronted with a hegemonic political discourse that
was characterised by strong tendencies to pathologise and demonise those more
confrontational types of political action. Particularly remarkable from a historically
comparative perspective was the direct association of Southall in 1976 with Notting Hill
in 1958. For it can be argued that it was one of the first times that the notion of “race
riots” was transformed from a moment of collective racist violence to a moment of
political opposition to racist violence. In order to make such an interpretation intelligible,
many political commentators had to adapt their stereotypes of Asian traditionalism and
conformism, which was usually resolved by introducing a distinction between a younger
and older generation. Another discursive strategy that was deployed by many
commentators was to embed the events in Southall in mid-1976 within the broader
ideological context of “urban decline”, “gang violence”, and “race conflict”. While in the
existing literature there is a tendency to analyse the ideological representation of Asian
communities in these terms as a more recent phenomenon (Alexander 2000, 2004;
Cockbain 2013), my research has shown that it can be retraced to at least the mid-1970s.

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6. The political conflicts over racist violence between the late 1970s and late 1980s

In this chapter, I will offer an analysis of the political conflicts over racist violence in a
moment of intensifying socio-economic crisis tendencies, ongoing postcolonial
transformations, as well as the rise of the Thatcherite hegemony project between the late
1970s and late 1980s. At the centre of this chapter will be the analysis of three
confrontational episodes which had a considerable impact on the political debates and
conflicts over racism at that historical moment and beyond: first, the case of fourteen
Black teenagers who died during and following a fire at a private house party in Deptford,
London, in January 1981, which according to the bereaved families, families and many
support actors was a racist arson attack; second, the case of Cherry Groce who was shot,
permanently paralysed and in 2011 died of the injuries that were inflicted upon her during
a police raid at her home in Brixton, London, in September 1985; third, the case of
Cynthia Jarrett who died during a police raid at her home in Tottenham, London, in
October 1985. Drawing on the theoretical and analytical framework outlined in chapters
2 and 3, I will begin with an analysis of the broader constellation of public debates about
and political struggles over racism and violence in this ‘turbulent decade’ (Bowling 1998:
58). The main emphasis will be on exploring the role which “race” played as an
‘ideological conductor’ (Hall et al. 2013: 2) of existing socio-economic and political crisis
tendencies, and the role which this racialisation of crisis discourses played as an
underpinning factor of intensified state violence against racialised minorities.
Furthermore, I will highlight the political contradictions of this period which was
characterised not only by the growing strength of the political forces of racism, but also
by crucial developments in the area of minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist politics that
paved the way for a short window of opportunity in the post-Thatcherite period (6.1). In
the second and third step, I will demonstrate that the political and juridical struggles in
the aftermath of these three cases were at the centre of these changing relations of force
and therefore need to be analysed systematically in order to make sense of the entire
period. This will involve a reconstruction of the sequences of events that have led to and
followed these incidents of deadly violence, with a particular emphasis on the subsequent
justice campaigns and protest dynamics, as well as an examination of the hegemonic
political, institutional and media responses to both the incidents and protests (6.2 and 6.3).
While the issue of deadly police violence has already been touched upon in the previous
chapters, it will be discussed more explicitly in this chapter. This is not a coincidence as
it was in this period that it had become a key object of political conflict.

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6.1 Context Analysis: The political conflicts over racism in the period of
Thatcherism

In the UK and other societies of the global north, the post-1973/4 period marked the
decline of the post-war regime of Fordism and further accelerated the long-term crisis of
the industrial sector, especially in the areas of heavy industry and manufacturing. This
crisis process was not a short-lived disruption but had a more fundamental and
longstanding impact on the capitalist world-system (Hobsbawm 1995: 403-32). In the
UK, the recession of 1974 and 1975 was followed by a short period of moderate economic
growth, only to fall back into recession in 1980 and 1981 (ONS 2020a). The Thatcher
government, which, informed by the Schumpeterian principle of “creative destruction”,
accelerated the process of deindustrialisation and welfare state disintegration, actively
reinforced the negative socio-economic consequences of these recessive dynamics
(Gallas 2015: 126-36; Martin 1989: 101-10). While the unemployment rate was at 3.7%
in 1973 and 1974 and only slightly increased to 5.4% in 1979, it reached an average of
9.9% between 1980 and 1989, with an annual unemployment number of more than 3
million between 1983 and 1987 (ONS 2020b; 2020c). Furthermore, between 1979 and
1985, the number of those living below the poverty line increased by 55%, from 6.1 to
9.4 million people (Gallas 2015: 135). These developments were also characterised by a
‘spatial polarisation’ (Martin 1989: 88), with many industrial centres being
disproportionally affected by unemployment, impoverishment, and infrastructural
decline. These socio-economic developments were accompanied by various geo-political
developments that became the subject of state action and public debates. This included
not only the ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland which by the turn of the decade reached
a phase of heightened escalation (McKittrick/McVea 2012: 138-72), but also the
territorial conflict with Pinochet’s Argentina over the Falkland Islands, one of the few
remnants of Britain’s imperial overseas territories (Hall 1988b). Furthermore, Britain’s
role within the Commonwealth began to shift with the economic rise of postcolonial
societies such India since the mid-1970s (Ganguly/Mukherji 2011; Mukherji 2014;
Ruparelia et al. 2011). Finally, the Commonwealth itself was increasingly confronted
with competing regional power blocs, in particular in light of the expansion and
deepening of the European Community during the 1980s.

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6.1.1 Hegemonic politics and media discourse

There is now an abundance of critical studies that have engaged with the shifting social
and political relations of forces in the period of Thatcherism, including the changing
politics of (anti-)racism. Thus, I do not have to offer a comprehensive empirical
reconstruction myself in order to situate the chosen case studies within the broader period
of late 1970s and 1980s. Instead, I will restrict myself to a focused recapitulation of those
aspects that are particularly relevant for getting to grips with the cases in question. At the
same time, however, my specific focus on the relation between racism, violence, crisis,
and contention requires a critical discussion of the interpretative and explanatory
frameworks that have been deployed in existing authoritative accounts. For, similar to the
periodisations of the 1970s which were discussed in the previous chapter, there is a
tendency to draw on one-dimensional frameworks that do not fully grasp the specific role
of racism as a crisis ideology. For some authors, Thatcherism was primarily a political-
economic type of crisis management. This includes not only authors with a traditional
materialist perspective that falsely reduce Thatcherism to its class-political aspects
(Jessop et al. 1988; Gallas 2015), but also critical materialist authors that stress the role
of Thatcherite racism, but primarily interpret it as strategy of organising ideological
cohesion in a moment of economic instability (Sivanandan 2008; Solomos 1988). For
other authors, Thatcherism was primarily a response to the crisis of nationalist identity
resulting from the loss of Empire. Prominent examples of this explanatory framework are
Gilroy (Gilroy 1987, 2004) and Hall (1988, 2019) who, as was discussed in chapter 2,
shifted in the direction of a neo-idealist framework through the 1980s. For instance, Hall
interprets the Thatcherite invocation of imperialist nostalgia as the resurgence of ‘ancient,
stone-age ideas’ (Hall 1988: 73) but does not further explain why these “ancient ideas”
were highly popular in the present moment, that is, how they related to material living
conditions and social relations in postcolonial Britain. My argument, on the other hand,
is that these different explanatory approaches need to be entwined in order to fully
understand the full force with which racism increasingly penetrated the mainstream
public stage in the 1980s. Furthermore, it is only against this background that the specific
developments in the area of minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist politics can be properly
analysed.

The most significant political development at the turn of the decade was
undoubtedly a profound right-wing shift in the British political landscape following the

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electoral victory of Thatcherism in May 1979. It does not require much elaboration that
racism was a key ingredient of the Thatcherite ideological approach. The significance of
Margaret Thatcher’s television interview from January 1978, which mobilised Powellite
paranoia about the alleged threats of migrants from ‘the new Commonwealth or Pakistan’
(Thatcher 1978) to the integrity of the ‘British character’ (ibid.) and expressed sympathies
with the electoral base of the National Front (NF), has been repeatedly stressed (see for
example Miles/Phizacklea 1984: 124-5; Schofield 2012: 106-7; Virdee 2014: 138-39).
For my discussion, this intervention was relevant in two regards: First, it was the first
time that a major political party directly appealed to neo-fascist political milieus as a
strategy of securing electoral majorities and political hegemony. From a socio-historical
perspective, this intervention can be characterised as the second time that the far right,
which despite its electoral successes of the mid-1970s was still a minor oppositional force,
managed to influence the highest level of party and state politics. Second, it paved the
way for the British Nationality Act 1981 which, following Solomos, ‘effectively excludes
British citizens of (mostly) Asian origin from the right of abode in Britain’ (Solomos
1993: 71; see also: Dixon 1983; Miles/Phizacklea 1984: 79-117). In the 1980s, there were
warnings that Thatcherism could further develop in the direction of a full-fledged
Powellite offensive (see for example Miles/Phizacklea 1984: 105). Following their
electoral success in 1979, however, the Thatcherites only occasionally drew on Powellite
ideology. In contrast to Powell’s obsessive hatred of the presence of racialised minorities
as such, the Conservative Party also reached out to a minority of Black and Asian British
citizens with a middle-class background and conservative political orientation. In the run-
up to the 1983 general election, for instance, campaign posters were produced that
portrayed, in two different versions, a Black and an Asian man wearing a suit,
supplemented by the slogan: ‘Labour says he’s Black, Tories say he’s British’ (cited in:
Gilroy 1987: 64). The precondition for this limited integrationist approach, however, was
a denialist perspective: Black people were expected not only to relinquish their Black
identity in order to be accepted as British, but also to deny their experiences of racism.
During the 1983 electoral campaign, for instance, David Waddington, Minister of State
for Home Affairs, proclaimed that ‘[t]he vast majority of immigrant people do not feel
despised, maltreated and unwanted, and live perfectly happy lives […].’ (cited in
Guardian 15/03/83) What is more, this approach was still compatible with a repressive
approach towards Black and Asian working-class communities. As Sivanandan puts it,
Thatcherism allowed ‘a few Blacks to ascend to the monetarist heaven while damning the

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many – and the young among them – to the workless wastes of the inner city.’
(Sivanandan 1987: vii)

This class-specific rearticulation of racism did not have to be invented but was
already an integral part of broader public discourses. Most important in this regard was
the ongoing racialised discourse about Britain’s “inner cities”. It is not necessary to offer
a comprehensive reconstruction of this discourse as this has already been done elsewhere
(Keith 1993; Rowe 1998; Solomos 1988 and 2003: 142-171). There is one aspect of this
discourse, however, which has not been examined in a more systematic fashion yet: the
growing tendency to characterise “inner cities” as “no-go areas”. Engaging with this
notion not only helps to illustrate how the racialised “inner city” discourse, which has
already been analysed in the previous chapters, has changed since the mid-1970s, but also
reveals that this racialised “inner city” discourse can only be fully grasped on the basis of
a multi-dimensional crisis-theoretical framework. The talk about “no-go areas” in the
“inner cities” emerged in the late 1970s and gained momentum in the context of the
pattern of urban unrest in Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, London, and other major
conurbations in the early 1980s (see section 6.1.3). The Conservative Party as well as the
centrist and right-wing segments of the news discourse were clearly the main driving
forces in introducing this image into the public discourse about urban unrest. In response
to the Bristol unrest, for instance, Home Secretary Whitelaw declared that ‘I am not
prepared, will not be prepared, and in no circumstances am prepared to contemplate “no
go” areas in this country, or any part of the UK.’ (cited in Guardian 29/04/80) The term
was also used by a group of Conservative MPs who demanded the resignation of the
officer in charge of the police operation in Bristol (Guardian 09/04/80). The Daily Mail,
too, portrayed the confrontations in Bristol as a moment where ‘mobs of black youths
went on the rampage, burning, looting, hurling bricks’ (Daily Mail 28/03/81) and turning
the area into ‘a no-go area for police’ (ibid.). In a later article, the newspaper justified the
use of excessive police force by stating ‘that once a no-go area is stablished, the job of
freeing it becomes a bloody and protracted one.’ (Daily Mail 05/04/80) 77 Following the
Brixton unrest, the Times published an article which uncritically forwarded statements
by ‘Senior Metropolitan police officers’ (Times 15/07/81), including the following threat
to the Asian community in Southall: ‘Asians should not think that Southall belonged to
them. All citizens had the right of free movement and the police could not permit no-go

77
The Daily Mail had already to use the term in the late 1970s in various sensationalist reports on
“mugging” in London. See for example Daily Mail (27/11/78; 11/09/79; 10/07/81)

135
areas.’ (ibid.) Moving from a descriptive to an interpretative level, this discourse about
“no-go area” undoubtedly served the purpose of mobilising conformist anxieties and
authoritarian desires for “law and order” by indicating a dramatic deterioration of the state
of “race relations”, “crime” and “violence” in Britain’s “inner cities”. Compared to the
previous history of “slum” and “inner city” discourses, then, the early 1980s saw another
intensification of racialised and personalised notions of “urban decline”. But it was not
only the feeling that “things got become worse” which explains the popularity of the term.
Equally important is the fact that by the early 1980s the term had already been filled with
a much broader reservoir of popular anxieties. An analysis of its history reveals that it
had originated in public debates about the escalating conflict in Northern Ireland in the in
the late 1960s and early 1970s 78, as well as about armed conflicts between white
supremacist and anti-colonial forces in various South African contexts. 79 While such
‘interdiscursive references’ (Wodak et al. 2009: 10) remained largely implicit, there were
some moments where this connection was openly expressed. The Guardian, for instance,
published a background article about the Liverpool unrest which stated that ‘[w]hat were
in Liverpool gangs with identifying names at one point, became defended no-go areas
later, and finally flashing petrol bombs hitting the main street just weeks after the pictures
of the young routing the British army provided astounding domestic television news film
the night of Bobby Sand’s death.’ (Guardian 31/07/81) For the attentive public audience,
then, the warnings about “no-go areas” had much more far-reaching implications. For this
image allowed to characterise the rioters in Britain’s “inner cities”, not simply as the
children of a pathological urban sub-culture, but as an integral part of a global movement
of political actors that in the past have defeated Britain’s Empire and in the present
continue to attack what is left of it. In other words, the term “no-go area” helped to
combine and fuse three types of crisis construals: It symbolised the “inner cities” not only
as spaces of socio-economic decline (crisis of capitalist accumulation) and political
instability (crisis of political legitimacy), but also as harbingers of an advanced
disintegration of the British nation which had begun in the moment of imperial decline
(crisis of nationalist identity). It is within such an alarmist “inner city” discourse, then,

78
See for example Daily Mail (20/03/71, 22/03/72, 26/05/72), Daily Mirror (29/06/72, 31/07/72, 01/08/72),
Times (23/03/72, 05/06/72, 22/08/75), Guardian (22/04/72, 06/07/72, 29/07/72), Observer (28/03/71,
23/04/72, 25/06/72), as well as the following parliamentary debates (HC Deb 13/10/69, 06/04/71, 24/07/72,
03/08/72). – See also McKittrick/McVea (2012: 64-70).
79
See for example Daily Mail (30/09/76), Times (03/03/78, 14/02/80, 15/08/80), Guardian (22/06/73,
08/02/74, 13/05/77), Observer (17/06/73, 04/04/76), as well as the following parliamentary debates (HC
Deb 03/02/77, 12/11/79).

136
that the Thatcher government and the police justified their repressive approach to Black
and Asian working-class communities. In a press release from 1983, for instance,
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kenneth Newman stated that ‘there is a problem with
young people, particularly young West Indians. […] In some areas, there is a brand of
obstruction and hostility which has led to deliberately engineering confrontations with
the police. It is, therefore, a priority to restore order in such areas.’ (cited in IRR 1987: 2)

Although the Thatcherites prioritised such a repressive approach, they did not
manage to shift the entirety of state apparatuses in this direction. It was especially in the
area of associative state apparatuses that actors with a social-liberal reform agenda
continued to operate in a limited capacity (Solomos 1988: 146-72; Bowling 1998: 57-
101). Most importantly, the wave of urban unrest in the first half of the 1980s (see 6.1.2)
led to the establishment of the Scarman Inquiry whose recommendations led to a series
of reform measures in the areas of urban development, police accountability and racial
equality. For instance, it led to the formation of the Police Complains Authority (PCA)
as a replacement for the Police Complaints Board in April 1985 (Newburn 2008: 92).
Overall, however, the impact of the Scarman Inquiry remained limited. Its critique was
expressed in terms of a liberal discourse that failed to acknowledge the institutional
dimension of state racism. As Hall puts it, ‘[t]he concept of “institutional racism” is not
merely repugnant to his sympathies. It is unthinkable within his discourse.’ (Hall 1982:
68) What is more, the government remained reluctant to fully implement Scarman’s
recommendations (Bowling/Phillips 2002: 9-11; Virdee 2014: 149). I will discuss further
below that the cases of Cherry Groce and Cynthia Jarrett were crucial moments where
this reluctance – and even a backlash against the “Scarman moment” – became apparent.

The parliamentary opposition to Thatcherism was characterised by internal tensions

which eventually led to the renewed strength of centrist factions which had already held
a dominant position in previous decades. Following the austerity approach of the 1970s
and the “Winter of Discontent” in 1978/9, the Labour leadership was confronted not only
with a lack of popular support, but also with growing internal opposition (Thorpe 1997:
191-2). Key developments in the early 1980s were the breakaway of the liberal-centrist
“Group of Four” which formed the Social Democratic Party in March 1981, two years of
moderate left-wing dominance under the leadership of Foot, and the growing influence
of radical left-wing politicians and factions (ibid.: 200-19; Gallas 2015: 157-8). In
response to these polarising tendencies, the centrist faction managed to re-seize power

137
with the leadership of Kinnock who was later applauded by Blair as the forerunner of
New Labour (Blair 1995). A closer look at the Kinnock leadership’s main crisis construals
reveals an ambivalent relation between nationalist and political-economic explanatory
approaches. In 1984, for instance, he characterised the ‘erosion of civil rights; the with-
drawal of welfare support; the cutbacks and closures; unemployment and civil disorder’
as well as the ‘great turmoil of the miners’ dispute’ (Kinnock 1984) as ‘the product of
Thatcherism’ (ibid.) At the same time, the promise of socio-economic recovery was
directly connected to and blurred by nationalist appeals. In contrast to Thatcherism, the
Kinnock leadership attempted to detach British nationalism from its imperial-
traditionalist legacy, promising to ‘rid [it] of all the vanities, the nostalgia for a past whose
glory missed most of our people’ (Kinnock 1985). What both Thatcher and Kinnock had
in common, however, was the attempt to forge social and political cohesion through the
construction of enemies. Particularly relevant was the image of the radical left as an
extremist force that works against ‘the people’ (ibid.), and whose main ‘casualties’ (ibid.)
are ‘the people whose jobs are destroyed, whose services are crushed, whose living
standards are pushed down to deeper depths of insecurity and misery.’ (ibid.) This
combative nationalism led to an ambivalent stance on the issue of racism. On the one
hand, promises were made ‘to meet the justified demands of black people; that they shall
have personal and economic status that is equal to any of this country’s citizens -
regardless of their colour or creed.’ (Kinnock 1984) On the one hand, there were no
significant attempts to turn these promises into practice (such as by strengthening anti-
discriminatory legislation or by repealing the existing system of racist immigration
controls). The racialised “no-go area” discourse also resonated within parts of the social-
democratic hegemony project. Shadow Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, for instance,
interpreted the Bristol unrest as an episode where a “no-go area” was created (Guardian
29/04/80), proclaimed ‘that there should never be “no go” areas in Britain’ (Guardian
05/04/80) and demanded ‘more talk about the problems of race relations and less about
immigration’ (ibid.). The Observer and Guardian, too, contributed to the racialised “no-
go area” discourse (Guardian 29/04/80, 23/05/80, 16/07/81, 28/07/81; Observer
29/09/85), but also published a few articles that sought to subvert its dominant meaning.
In an article on the problem of racist violence in London’s East End, for instance, the
Observer states that ‘[p]articular estates have earned the reputation among the Bengali
community of being no-go areas because of widespread racial intimidation.’ (Observer
17/09/78; see also Guardian 08/02/80, 06/05/81) The only newspaper that did not actively

138
contribute to the “no-go area” discourse in the late 1970s and early 1980s was the Daily
Mirror. As will be discussed in the second case study, however, it forcefully contributed
to this discourse by the mid-1980s.

There is one development in the broader social-democratic hegemony project that

deserves special attention: the growing influence of left-wing, anti-racist positions both
on a rank-and-file, local government, and parliamentary level. Most important was the
growing number of local councils under the control of socialist politicians who attempted
to reverse Thatcher’s austerity measures by increasing public expenditure on the local
level. This conflict culminated in the so-called “Rate-Capping Rebellion” in 1984/5, an
eventually unsuccessful attempt by 26 Labour councils to force the government to
withdraw from its plans to control and restrict local fiscal policy (Langley et al. 1989: 34-
46; Rattenbury 2008: 121-48). Furthermore, these actors attempted to establish and
strengthen anti-racist policies in employment, housing, and other local policy areas
(Virdee 2014: 150-55). It was this new terrain of political activity in the Labour Party
which also became attractive for a number of Black and Asian political activists affiliated
with the social-democratic and socialist left. In the early 1980s, various politicians and
campaigners including Diane Abbott, Sharon Atkin, Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng and
Keith Vaz founded Labour Party Black Sections, an organisation which managed to
establish 35 branches and fielded over 200 candidates during the 1986 local elections
(Shukra 1998: 70-80). Overall, then, there was a growing influence of left-wing, anti-
racist counter-hegemonic forces who sought to establish a ‘transitional public sphere’
(Shukra et al. 2004) within the Labour Party that would allow to attract mainstream
political attention to minority demands and to challenge the longstanding tradition of
racist selectivities in the social-democratic hegemony project. As will be discussed in the
second case study as well as the next chapter on the Stephen Lawrence case, these shifts
were highly significant. At the same time, however, they were met with strong resistance
from the dominant centrist faction. For instance, Kinnock openly dismissed the Labour
Party Black Sections project as a form of left-wing “extremism” and racial “separatism”
(see TMG 2021a). The LPBS campaign was also opposed by various minority
organisations, but for entirely different reasons. The Indian Workers’ Association, for
instance, dismissed it in a leaflet as a ‘reactionary idea’ (cited in: CLB MS 2142/A/1/4/2)
that, instead of fighting racism in the Labour Party and trade union movement, is ‘bound
to exacerbate and increase racial tension’ (ibid.). Furthermore, it suggested that this would
only pave the way for the formation of ‘a separate black party’ (ibid.) with a subordinate,

139
marginalised position in the party system. It concluded that this would be beneficial to
some ‘opportunists and careerists’ (ibid.), but not to the ‘fight against racism and racial
practices for the unity of working class.’ (ibid.).

6.1.2 Far-right oppositional politics

The most important development in the area of far-right politics was the decline of the
NF as an electoral force with mainstream potential. Although the NF fielded 303
candidates for the 1979 general election, these only received an average of 1.3%
(Goodwin 2011: 30). Goodwin argues that this electoral failure was the result of two
factors. First, the NF suffered from the growing influence and competition of Powellite
and Thatcherite ideology, especially its anti-immigrant racism, within the Conservative
party and the wider public discourse: ‘By the end of the 1970s, the Conservatives had
assumed ownership over the issue which offered the most opportunities to the extreme
right.’ (ibid.: 28) Second, it was increasingly confronted with anti-fascist campaigns,
most notably the Anti-Nazi League, that made every effort to thwart NF demonstrations
and to reveal its neo-Nazi character: ‘Particularly from the mid-1970s onward, this
extremist baggage was increasingly publicised by an organised anti-fascist movement.’
(ibid.: 34) However, this electoral failure should not be misunderstood as a political
failure per se. On the contrary, it was exactly the growing influence of Powellism,
especially the call for repatriation, which was interpreted by far-right activists as an
indication that there is great potential for recruitment among the conservative electorate.
As Schofield puts it, Powellism was ‘a major catalyst in the growth of support for extreme
right-wing groups, such as the National Front and the Immigration Control Association.’
(Schofield 2012: 101) In strategic terms, the most important consequence of the electoral
failure was that the NF primarily continued its tradition of racist and antisemitic street
terror (see section 6.2.1).

6.1.3 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional politics

It is against the background of this combined experience of racist hostility, neo-fascist

threats, state repression, official denialism, and socio-economic marginalisation that the
late 1970s and early 1980s became an extraordinary moment of communal minority, anti-
racist and anti-fascist self-organisation and mobilisation. As Virdee puts it, ‘[g]iven the

140
adverse political conditions under which such social change was secured, it was nothing
short of remarkable that the returns of 1970s anti-racism were actually consolidated in
the 1980s.’ (Virdee 2014: 146) There were at least five approaches in particular that
shaped the wider field of counter- and anti-hegemonic opposition to racism and fascism
in the 1980s. First, it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s that urban unrest became a
distinct form of social and political protest. What made these protest activities specific is
their spontaneous character, that is, the relative absence of an organisational basis. In light
of the specific contexts from which they emerged, however, is not difficult to determine
their political character. Most notably, they occurred in urban areas most strongly affected
by the negative consequences of the economic recession and the Thatcherite crisis
management. It was especially British Black and Asian working class communities
resident in “inner city” areas such as Notting Hill, Brixton, Tottenham or Southall in
London, Moss Side in Manchester, Handsworth in Birmingham, or Toxteth in Liverpool
which were affected by disproportionally high degrees of unemployment, poverty and
precarity (IRR 1981; 1991b; Beynon 1984; Robert 1984; Gifford 1986; Keith 1993: 19-
50). Furthermore, most of these events emerged from local protests at repressive police
activities that were seen as deliberate attacks on racialised minority communities, such as
“Operation Swamp” in Brixton, or a police raid on the British-Caribbean Black and White
Café in Bristol (Keith 1993: 19-50). In this sense, the phenomenon of urban unrest can
be regarded as the political expression of a deep-seated, multifaceted crisis experience of
marginalised working-class communities in general and their Black and Asian segments
in particular. Second, these increasingly hostile socio-economic and political conditions
also led to the formation of an increasing number of localised community-based
organisations, such as the Campaign against Racism and Fascism (1979), the Newham
Monitoring Group (1980), the Hackney Black People’s Defence Organisation (1980), the
Southall Monitoring Group (1981), the Brixton Defence Campaign (1981), the Moss Side
Defence Committee (1981), the Broadwater Farm Youth Association (1981), or the
Broadwater Farm Defence Committee (early 1980s) (see Peplow 2019). 80 Overall, these
initiatives put an emphasis on the necessity of self-organisation against the combined
threat of racist violence, state repression and socio-economic marginalisation in urban
working-class areas. The Southall Monitoring Group, for instance, was formed in the
aftermath of the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar (see chapter 5) as well as the police

80
It was also in the mid-1980s that new Jewish responses to antisemitism emerged, in particular the
formation of the monitoring and self-defence organisation Community Security Trust in 1984 (CST 2022:
14).

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killing of the activist Blair Peach during confrontations between police forces and anti-
fascist protesters against a NF event in central Southall in April 1979 (TMG 2021b). The
Broadwater Farm Youth Association emerged more directly from attempts on the
Broadwater Farm Estate to establish a local support network for vulnerable groups as well
as a self-organised urban regeneration campaign (GPIA GB LRA 01/150; Sivanandan
2008: 49). Third, the 1980s saw also the emergence of new initiatives in the area of large-
scale campaigning. In 1978, for instance, the Organisation of Women of African and
Asian Descent was formed, the first nation-wide umbrella organisation of local Black
women’s groups which played a significant role in the organisation of struggles in
different areas such as policing, immigration, work, health, or education (Bryan et al.
2018: 164-70). In 1981, activists and campaigners involved in the Blair Peach case
founded INQUEST which has established itself as the ‘only charity providing expertise
on state related deaths and their investigation to bereaved people, lawyers, advice and
support agencies, the media and parliamentarians.’ (Inquest 2021b) The most important
development in the area of organised anti-fascism was the formation of Anti-Fascist
Action (1985), a coalition of various predominantly white left-wing actors that emerged
in the wake of the declining influence of the Anti-Nazi League and sought to take up its
dual strategy of street confrontation and mass mobilisation (Copsey 2000: 159-66). As
will be explored in the next sections, the political conflicts over the New Cross, Groce
and Jarrett cases played a catalytic role in all these broader developments in the area of
minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist politics. More specifically, it will be demonstrated
that it is impossible to fully grasp the latter without taking into account the impact of the
former.

6.2 Case Study: The political conflicts over the death of fourteen Black teenagers
in Deptford, 1981-1982

In this case study, I will discuss which role the political conflicts in the aftermath of the
death of fourteen Black teenagers during and following a likely arson attack on a private
home in New Cross, London, played in the political conflicts over racism and violence in
the early 1980s and beyond. Based on the examination of original archival documents, I
will examine the main protest dynamics, public discussions and institutional procedures
associated with this confrontational episode and put these in the context of the broader
relations of forces analysed in the first part of this chapter. Overall, this case study will

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offer an innovative insight into the politicisation of violent racism in the period of
Thatcherism. In the literature on the politics of (anti-)racism in contemporary British
history, the New Cross case is often mentioned, but rarely examined in a systematic
fashion and with a socio-historical perspective (see for example Back 2016; Bowling
1998: 61-62; Bowling/Phillips 2002: 14; Gilroy 1987: 129-32; Fryer 2010: 398; Olusoga
2016: 515-17; Perry 2016: 245; Sivanandan 2008: 136; Solomos 2003: 144-45; Waters
2018: 174-75). Currently, there are only three exceptions which have emerged quite
recently. Robin Bunce and Paul Field (2015: 187-208) as well as Carol Pierre (2019)
provide illuminating insights into both the local history of racist and neo-fascist violence
as well as the formation process of the New Cross Massacre Action Committee
(NCMAC) and the Black People’s Action Day. What is missing in both studies, however,
is a more systematic analysis of the NCMAC’s institutional struggles in the criminal
justice system in the aftermath of the New Cross fire. More recently, Andrews (2021) has
made a valuable contribution to reconstructing these juridical-political struggles (ibid.:
194-201), in addition to innovative reflections upon the cultural politics of
commemoration which have emerged from the case (ibid.: 187-94). What remains largely
absent or rudimentary in all these studies, however, is a more systematic socio-historical
contextualisation of the case. The authors rightly point to the overarching culture of racist
indifference and hostility in official and mainstream discourses but do not examine these
discourses responses in a more systematic way. For instance, the particular role which
this case has played in mobilising conformist-traditionalist anxieties about “decline” and
“disorder” has not been explored yet. In the absence of such a contextual analysis, the
authors also tend to reproduce monolithic notions of “the state” and “the media”, which
occasionally leads them to draw the picture of a clear-cut antagonism between Black and
anti-racist activists on the one hand, and a unified political establishment on the other (see
Andrews 2021: 182; Bunce/Field; Pierre 2019: 165-67). In my case study, on the other
hand, I will offer a more nuanced analysis that seeks to situate the multiple sites of conflict
which emerged in the aftermath of New Cross within a broader context of shifting
political relations of forces in the area of hegemonic politics and mass media discourse in
the early 1980s.

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6.2.1 The New Cross case in the wider context of racist violence in the early to mid-
1980s

In the early hours of 18 January 1981, thirteen Black teenagers aged between 15 and 20
lost their lives during a fire which broke out at a private party in 439 New Cross Road in
Deptford, London. The party, which was attended by many youths from the local Black
community, took place at the home of Amza Ruddock on the occasion of her daughter
Yvonne’s 16th birthday. Humphrey Geoffrey Brown, Peter Campbell, Steve Collins,
Patrick Cummings, Gerry Paul Francis, Andrew Gooding, Lloyd Hall, Roseline Henry,
Patricia Johnson, Glenton Powell, Owen Wesley Thompson, as well as Yvonne and her
brother Paul Ruddock died during the fire or in hospital in the following weeks. At least
27 more teenagers were physically injured during the fire, some of whom severely. In the
following weeks, the bereaved families repeatedly received messages containing racist
deaths threats, at least one signed by a known NF activist (LMA 4463/B/08/01/001+002).
This led them to suspect that the fire was the result of a neo-Nazi arson attack, most likely
perpetrated by Column 88, a neo-Nazi terrorist group which, following Jones and
Jackson, emerged during the heyday of the NF in the mid-1970s and focused on
perpetrating ‘violent activism, which included carrying out letter bombs and other
terrorist-style activity’ (Jones/Jackson 2018: 42). On 9 July 1983, Anthony Berbeck, one
of the survivors of the fire, took his own life. He had been suffering from serious mental
health problems after the death of many of his friends. The Race Today Collective
reported that ‘[h]e was the 14th victim of the New Cross fire.’ (Race Today 08+09/83:
37)

The New Cross fire occurred within a wider atmosphere of racist violence which,
following Bowling, remained at a high level throughout the 1980s. Looking at the most
extreme example of racist murders, he documents a shift from 6 deaths between 1970-74
to 18 deaths between 1975-79, 27 deaths between 1980-84 (including the thirteen deaths
of the New Cross fire), and 18 deaths between 1985-89 (ibid.: 59). 81 Furthermore, there
was a much wider pattern of organised neo-fascist and everyday racist violence (Bethnal
Green and Stepney Trades Council 1978; IRR 1987). 82 These attacks were primarily
directed against communities of Afro-Caribbean and South Asian descent, but also

81
Bowling included those cases ‘where it was known or widely believed to have involved some element of
racial motivation.’ (Bowling 1998: 56)
82
The most consistent coverage of this pattern of racist and far-right violence can be found in the
Searchlight Magazine throughout the 1980s.

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included other minority communities. According to evidence collected by Bowling, for
instance, there was a regular occurrence of antisemitic threats and attacks in the early
1980s, as well as an upsurge of such incidents in the mid-1980s (Bowling 1998: 64, 103-
4). Furthermore, there were reports of regular attacks on Muslim communities, including
arson attacks on mosques (see for example Guardian 30/08/85). Searchlight Magazine
also published reports about racist violence against Vietnamese residents in Deptford and
other London areas in the early 1980s (Searchlight 05/82; 06/83: 17). What has changed
since the early to mid-1970s is that many incidents have not remained unchallenged but
have led to a growing number of justice campaigns and protests. To name but a few
examples: In May 1978, Altab Ali, a textile worker from the British Bengali community,
was stabbed to death by three youths in Whitehall, London, in May 1978. During the
police interrogation, the perpetrators admitted the racist motivation of the murder
(Widgery 1986: 16). Furthermore, this murder occurred in a context of organised neo-
fascist aggression against Bangladeshi and Bengali communities. One month later, for
instance, a group of 150 NF activists rioted in Brick Lane in the East End of London,
shouting racist death threats, attacking people, and destroying shops (Bethnal Green and
Stepney Trades Council 1978: 41). Nevertheless, according to the Institute of Race
Relations, this case has been accompanied by ‘a consistent police policy of denying the
racial bias (IRR 1979: 20). Following the funeral, around 7,000 people largely from the
Bengali community took the streets to protest against racist violence and police
indifference (Troyna/Hatcher 1991: 30). In July 1980, Akhtar Ali Baig, a young Pakistani
student, was killed by a group of white youths in East Ham, London. According to
Bowling, ‘the evidence of racism was overwhelming.’ (Bowling 1998: 53) However, anti-
racist monitoring groups reported that the investigating police force attempted to deny a
racist motivation (IRR 1987: 59). In the immediate aftermath of the murder, around 150
youths marched towards the investigating police station in order to protest against the
murder. This march was followed by three major demonstrations with more than 12,000
participants in total, organised and supported by various organisations such as the
Steering Committee of Asian Organisations, the Indian Workers’ Association, the
Newham Youth Movement, the Anti-Nazi League, and the International Marxist Group.
In the same year, the Newham Monitoring Project was formed with the aim of monitoring
racist attacks and providing support for those experiencing any form of racist
discrimination and violence (NMP/CARF 1991: 40-44; IRR BHC 01/04/04/01/10/01/06).
In July 1981, there was a patrol bomb attack on the house of a British Pakistani family in

145
Belgrave, London. Parveen Khan and her three children Aqsa, Kamran and Imran died in
the fire; the father Muhammad Yunis sustained severe burn injuries. According to the
IRR, the police immediately ruled out a racist motive and were primarily directed against
the father and his social milieu. The investigation was officially closed without a result
in 1984 (IRR 1987: 65). After the arson attack, the Khan Massacre Action Committee
was formed and at least one major demonstration was planned with the support of the
Anti-Nazi League (IRR BHC 01/04/04/01/10/08/17). In Deptford, too, there was a high
number of racist street attacks in the months prior to the New Cross fire (Bunce/Field
2015: 189-191). Furthermore, there was a series of arson attacks on various Black
community centres as well as cultural institutions with an anti-racist record, such as the
Moonshot Youth Club in December 1977, the Albany Theatre in August 1978, and the
Lewisham Way Centre in 1980. Although there had been concrete leads that neo-fascist
groups were responsible, the investigating police authorities ruled out the possibility of
racist arson in all these cases (IRR 1979: 21; Observer 08/03/81). 83 The only serious
attempt to challenge the threat of neo-fascism came from a broad configuration of anti-
racist and anti-fascist actors. In August 1977, for instance, two different initiatives
organised street protests against a so-called “anti-muggers” march by the NF in
Lewisham. While the first march organised by representatives from the All-Lewisham
Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, the Communist Party of Great Britain, the
Jewish Defence Committee, and the Church of England remained largely peaceful, the
second march organised by the Socialist Workers’ Party turned into large-scale physical
confrontations with NF activists and police officers, eventually leading to the
discontinuation of the NF march (Copsey 2000: 126-28; Virdee 2014: 133-34). 84

One case that I would like to highlight at this point is that of Ahmed Iqbal Ullah, a
13-year-old British Asian boy, who was racially abused and stabbed to death by a white
boy in the playground of Burnage High School in Manchester in September 1986
(MacDonald et al. 1988: 7-17). While the police managed to identify and charge the
perpetrator who in February 1987 was convicted of murder (ibid.: 75-78), it had

83
After the fire in the Albany Theatre, for instance, the owners received a note saying ‘Got you! 88’, which
was a neo-Nazi code and most likely associated with Column 88 (Bunce/Field 2015: 191).
84
Despite these extensive protest dynamics, however, most of these cases barely received any mainstream
public attention. As the Campaign against Racism and Fascism observed, ‘[i]f you were to judge from the
national press and TV, the summer of 1980 saw hardly an incident of racial violence in Britain. The national
press managed to report the murderous attack on Akhtar Ali Baig in July in Newham, but the vast numbers
of other incidents of racial attack briefly covered in local newspapers do not, apparently, constitute national
news.’ (Searchlight 11/80)

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maintained from the beginning that racism was not a motivating factor (ibid.: ix). It was
both the murder itself and the official denial of racism which led to various local protest
dynamics, including various community meetings, a demonstration with about 1,000
participants, as well as regular pickets of the trial with between 50 and 250 participants.
In addition to established community organisations such as the Greater Manchester
Bangladeshi Association and the Pakistani Workers’ Association, the case also led to the
formation of the Ahmed Ullah Memorial Committee whose political approach was
inspired by the Southall and Asian Youth Movements (ibid.: x). Similar to Gurdip Singh
Chaggar case, these protest dynamics were characterised by tensions between an older
generation of activists that prioritised pressure activities through established channels of
political representation, and a younger generation of activists that regarded the official
culture of indifference and denial as evidence that the practice of self-defence is the only
viable option (ibid.: 57-67). While the latter current was unable to assert itself in this
conflict, the former current achieved some success by convincing the local council to
establish an independent inquiry, led by the white left-wing barrister Ian MacDonald who
also represented the bereaved families of the New Cross case. The inquiry found that ‘the
murder was first and foremost a racist murder’ (ibid.: 378) and identified a widespread
culture of racist harassment and violence at Manchester schools (ibid.: 133-51, 261-84).
Strikingly, however, the local council refused to publish the inquiry report on the ground
that it might trigger libel action whose potential financial costs it was unwilling to cover
(ibid. xiv-xvi). Macdonald and his team eventually decided to publish the report
independently in July 1988 (ibid. ix-xiii). This episode demonstrates that there were
already first attempts to establish more extensive institutional responses to contentious
deaths of Black and Asian individuals at the local government level. But the refusal to
publish the results also shows how fragile these processes still were. As will be discussed
in the remainder of this chapter, the struggles in the aftermath of the New Cross fire as
well as the death of Cynthia Jarrett became important moments in this long-term struggle
for the establishment of independent inquiries as an institutional base for the politics of
truth and justice.

6.2.2 Minority and anti-racist protest dynamics

It is in this context of a growing politicisation of racist and far-right violence that the
political conflicts over the New Cross fire need to be situated. Immediately after the fire,

147
the survivors and bereaved received political support from a wide range of individuals
and organisations. Only two days after the fire, the Race Today Collective, a political
organisation with a history of Black Power activism informed by an intellectual tradition
of Black Marxism articulated through the work of C.L.R James (Robinson 2000: 241-
86), organised an emergency meeting which was attended by around 300 people,
including representatives from other Black Power organisations, and led to the formation
of a multi-faceted organisational setting spearheaded by the New Cross Massacre Action
Committee (NCMAC) (Bunce/Field 2015: 189-90). Although the Race Today Collective
took the lead in the subsequent political and institutional struggles, there was a much
larger number of political actors who got involved in the organisation of protest activities.
The West Indian Standing Conference organised a public meeting in the Moonshot Youth
Club on 25 January, which had been the first shelter for the survivors and bereaved in the
early hours of 18 January. This meeting was attended by 2,000 people and followed by a
protest rally in front of the burned-out house in New Cross Road. Further meetings were
organised by the Black Unity and Freedom Party at the Moonshot Club on 23 January
and by the Pan-Afrikan Congress Movement at the West Green Community Centre on 1
February (GPIA NCM 1/2/1/1). 85 There were also various support events, such as fund-
raising concerts at the Black Women’s Centre in Brixton, at Evelyn 190 Community
Centre in Deptford, and at Goldmiths’ Student Union Hall (ibid.). While all these actors
shared the common goal to establish a strong community-led protest campaign, they were
also separated by crucial political differences. For instance, the Pan-Afrikan Congress
Movement strongly dismissed the idea of coalition building across racialised boundaries
and demanded the exclusion of white and Asian people from NCMAC meetings
(Andrews 2021: 188; Bunce/Field 2015: 190-91). This position was informed by an
essentialist notion of “race relations” as well as a conspiratorial notion of white
supremacy that interpreted the New Cross fire as the result of an orchestrated attempt by
government, media, and white British society more generally to destroy Black lives in
Britain. In a leaflet from January 1981, the fire was even characterised as part of a
‘barbarous HOLOCAUST’ (GPIA NCM 1/2/1/1). The Race Today Collective, on the
other hand, developed a critique that was situated in a more complex analysis of social
and political relations of forces and was attentive to the class-specific rearticulation of
contemporary racism and, by extension, anti-racism. Already in 1978, it characterised its

85
Both organisations also participated in the NCMAC campaign (Andrews 2021: 188; Bunce/Field 2015:
190-91)

148
political approach in the following way: ‘Race Today is an organisation which has had as
its guiding principle, that its content and practice be guided by the activity of the black
working class – what it is saying and doing. That the working class will always be in the
leadership of any struggle or movement.’ (cited in Bunce/Field 2015: 159) While the last
sentence suggests a traditional materialist notion of class politics, the first sentence
focuses more explicitly on the specific role of racism in the re-configuration of class
relations. As a result, the RTC highlighted the significance of black leadership but also
acknowledged the need to create political alliances with white anti-racists, in particular
those from working-class communities (ibid.: 190-191; see also Race Today 05+06/79:
54).

In light of these ongoing differences, tensions and challenges, the approach

suggested by the Race Today Collective was remarkable in various regards. This can be
illustrated by looking at the organisational framework established during the NCMAC’s
inaugural meeting. First, the NCMAC itself was primarily responsible for public
campaigning and communal outreach. As will be discussed further below, the NCMAC
engaged in a complex setting of protest activities that were centred around the idea of
Black mass mobilisation but also included institutional struggles and pressure group
activities. Over the following weeks, the London-centred NCMAC also transformed into
a nation-wide umbrella organisation with sections in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds,
and other English cities (BCA RC/RF/16/09/K). Second, it was decided to form the New
Cross Fire Parents Committee in order to make sure that the bereaved families take a
leading role in the broader campaign (GPIA NCM 1/1). The significance of this decision
cannot be stressed enough insofar as it was the first time that the needs, concerns and
demands of the bereaved families were put centre stage in the organised struggle against
racist violence. Third, the Black People’s Assembly (BPA) and General Assembly (GA)
were established – two public forums whose purpose was to offer local residents and other
members of the public in support of the campaign the opportunity to participate in the
campaign’s decision-making process. While the BPA was open to Black and Asian
people, the General Assembly also allowed the participation of white people (Pierre 2019:
164). In the broader history of black politics, this was an innovative attempt to negotiate
between the principles of black autonomy and anti-racist alliance building. Fourth, a Fact
Finding Commission (FFC) was established in anticipation of the well-known dynamics
of reality-distorting ideology production in official and hegemonic public discourses. The
FFC’s task was to produce independent knowledge about the events that had led to the

149
deadly fire, focusing in particular on witness testimonies and other forms of what
Andrews calls ‘experiential expertise’ (Andrews 2021: 195). According to a NCMAC
pamphlet from 1991, the FFC attempted to ‘provide alternative news and information to
the press and TV’ and to break ‘the police monopoly of planting their own biased
information in the media.’ (cited in BCA RC/RF/16/09/K) While previous struggles over
incidents of deadly violence had remained in a reactive position vis-à-vis the official and
hegemonic practices of knowledge production, the New Cross case can be considered one
of the first times that families and activists went on the offensive, putting the politics of
truth centre stage. 86

The most important public intervention emerging from the NCMAC activities was
the organisation of a major protest rally in central London. After several weeks of
campaigning throughout Britain, and with the support of existing organisations such as
the Joint Council of the Welfare of Immigrants, the Newham Youth Movement and the
Pan African Congress Movement (UK), the New Cross Massacre Black People’s Action
Day (BPDA) took place on 2 March 1981 (LMA 4463/B/08/01/004) An estimated
number of 15,000 (police estimation) to 20,000 people (NCMAC estimation) from
London and other parts of the UK took the streets and brought public life in London to a
halt (LMA 4463/B/08/01/007; BCA RC/RF/16/09/K). In a demonstration leaflet, the
NCMAC called to stand up ‘AGAINST THE MASS MURDER OF BLACK PEOPLE’,
‘AGAINST ATTACKS BY WHITE RACISTS ON BLACK PEOPLE’, ‘AGAINST
THE BRITISH MOVEMENT, THE NATIONAL FRONT AND COLUMN 88’,
‘AGAINST THE LIES AND CONFUSION SPREAD BY NEWSPAPERS, RADIO
AND TELEVISION’, and ‘FOR THE RIGHTS OF BLACK PEOPLE TO HAVE THEIR
PARTIES WITHOUT INTERFERENCE’. Furthermore, it was declared that ‘WE WILL
NOT LET THE POLICE PLAY AROUND WITH OUR LIVES’ (cited in BCA
RC/RF/16/09/K). Equipped with banners and signs, the demonstrators scandalised the
insufficient police, judicial and government responses (’13 DEAD AND NOTHING
SAID’, ‘STOCKWELL 87 IS A LIAR, A BOMB CAUSED THE FIRE’), and made use
of slogans that emerged from the struggles in the aftermath of the murder of Gurdip Singh
Chaggar (‘COME WHAT MAY, WE ARE HERE TO STAY’) (cited in ibid.). In a public
declaration, the NCMAC criticised the indifference towards the New Cross fire victims

86
The NCMAC also established a New Cross Fire Fund that collected £27,000 in order to financially assist
the bereaved families (BCA RC/RF/16/09/K).
87
This was a reference to the leading police investigator.

150
as a form of complicity with the racist perpetrators, and referred to the racialised double
standards underlying the government’s practice of condolences:

The national authorities in Parliament and Government, in a further act of barbarism,

ignored the tragedy of the families of the dead and injured. But they sent messages of
condolence to the fire victims in Ireland 88, for cynical reasons of state. The authorities have
ignored for three decades the pain, the rage and outrage of the black communities around
the country at the racial murders, injuries and threats to our existence. Threats have come
even from the highest authorities in the land. The New Cross Massacre Black People’s Day
of Action is another stage in the response of the black people and of our allies in the country
to this savagery and this barbarism. (cited in GPIA NCM/1/2/2/1/1)

The Black People’s Action Day can be characterised as one of the largest anti-racist and
anti-fascist protest demonstrations in the British post-war period. Its size was similar to
or even higher than the commemoration event after the death of Blair Peach in April 1979
with an estimated number of 15,000 participants (Grewal 2003: 6) and was surpassed
only by the tens of thousands of participants during the Rock against Racism and Anti-
Nazi League carnivals in the late 1970s (Virdee 2014: 137). In a summary from 1991, the
NCMAC characterised it as ‘[…] the largest and most effective demonstration black
political power in Britain to today’s date. It was the watershed event in black history in
Britain and it brought about major changes in British society.’ (BCA RC/RF/16/09/K)

While the Black People’s Day of Action was primarily informed by the idea of
Black-led mass mobilisation, it also entailed some elements of a ‘transitional public
sphere’ approach (Shukra et al. 2004). Most notably, the NCMAC liaised with Labour
MP Christopher Price who then invited 14 left-wing Labour MPs to meet the NCMAC in
parliament in late February. During the meeting, it was decided that these MPs would
submit an Early Day Motion in order to secure a parliamentary debate on the New Cross
case – an attempt which eventually failed (Andrews 2021: 190; GPIA NCM 1/2/4/1).
Furthermore, the NCMAC organised press conferences (GPIA NCM 1/3/2) and sent
protest letters to Thatcher and the Speaker of Parliament (GPIA NCM 1/2/4/1). This
suggests that the NCMAC did not simply regard “the state” or “the media” as hostile
entities, but rather as more complex institutional terrains which in the early 1980s were
also occupied by a minority of moderate left-wing political actors that might be more
responsive to the concerns and demands of the bereaved families. Furthermore, the

88
This is a reference to the Stardust nightclub fire discussed below (see section 6.2.4).

151
NCMAC’s usage of conventional channels of communication suggests that it was willing
to make use of every means available, even if its impact was considered to be minimal.

6.2.3 Police investigation and inquest

In the aftermath of the fire – and in response to the first protest activities – the South
London Criminal Investigation Department set up a large team of around 50 investigators
(TNA HO 287/2992: item 21). According to press reports, the police team indeed
investigated the possibility of racist arson and tasked the Special Branch unit to evaluate
the potential of a neo-fascist background (Times 20/01/81; Guardian 23/02/81). Within
the first two weeks of investigation, however, the police ruled out both an external cause
of the fire and a racist motive, claiming instead that a fight between party guests had
caused the fire (Guardian 23/02/81). Eventually, however, the police remained incapable
of identifying, arresting, and charging any potential suspect. Thus, drawing on Bowling’s
stage model discussed in chapter 3, the case has never reached the fourth stage of a
criminal prosecution.

In addition to the organisation of street protests, the NCMAC focused on

intervening in the judicial proceedings following the New Cross fire. Following Bunce
and Field, this approach can be regarded as an expression of the political experience of
the Race Today Collective which had emerged as part of the Black Power struggles of
the late 1960s and early 1970s. At that time, Race Today Collective members including
Jean Ambrose, Barbara Beese, Patricia Dick, Farrukh Dhondy, Leila Hassan, Darcus
Howe, Linton Kwesi Johnson, John La Rose and Mala Sen had been involved in
institutional struggles in order to protect Black Power activists from police and judicial
repression, such as during the “Mangrove Nine” and “Old Bailey Three” campaigns
(Bunce/Field 2015: 93-137, 171-86). The most important elements of the NCMAC’s legal
campaign were the direct participation and intervention in the inquest hearings, the
organisation of legal representation for the families which was undertaken by the
renowned white left-wing barristers Michael Mansfield and Ian MacDonald (BCA
RC/RF/16/09/K), and the organisation of press conferences and regular pickets in front
of the inquest location. Thus, while maintaining a state-critical perspective, the NCMAC
activists regarded the judicial apparatus as an important field of political struggle. In the
broader history of political opposition to racist violence, this was an extremely important

152
step insofar as it strongly extended the field of intervention and also demonstrated that
political radicalism and institutional struggles do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Despite these interventions, however, the inquest turned out to be short-lived and
disappointing. After eleven days of inquest hearings, the jury returned an open verdict on
14 May 1981, suggesting that the presented evidence on the cause of the fire was
inconclusive. It can be argued that the inquest was characterised by significant
ideological, processual and repressive selectivities. First, there is evidence to suggest that
both the police and the coroner Arthur Gordon Davies attempted to present the physical
and circumstantial evidence in a selective and biased way. For instance, although it was
revealed at the beginning of the inquest that the police found an incendiary device outside
of the house, made of material that was also found inside the room where the fire broke
out, the forensic expert who had found the device described it as an ‘awful coincidence’,
and the coroner suggested that it might have been a ‘red herring’ (cited in Times
22/04/81). Second, large parts of the oral evidence produced by the police turned out to
be invalid because all the party guests who were heard during the inquest retracted their
statements during police interrogation. Various witnesses reported that they made false
statements after being threatened and insulted by police officers, and in some cases kept
in custody for up to three days. 89 One witness reportedly stated that police officers had
called him racist slurs (Times 02/05/81). Nevertheless, the police maintained its position
that the fire was caused by a group of Black party guests involved in a fight (see LMA
4463/B/08/01/007). Furthermore, it was reported that the coroner used these retracted
statements during his summary of the evidence (Guardian 10/05/81), and also attempted
to question the credibility of those witnesses who had retracted their statements. In his
concluding remarks he reportedly said that the jury would have to ‘decide whether the
boys told lies because they were so frightened of the police and just wanted to get home.
[…] The insolent behaviour of some of the witnesses in this court hardly bears out this
fear of authority’ (cited in Times 14/05/81).

That these inconsistencies became subject to public scrutiny was largely due to
interventions by the bereaved families, their legal representatives, and political
supporters. According to press reports, the inquest was characterised by recurring
conflicts between the coroner, the police lawyers, and the family lawyers. On 12 May,

89
See for example Guardian (24/04/81, 25/04/81, 29/04/81, 30/04/81, 01/05/81, 02/05/81) and Times
(25/04/81, 29/04/81, 02/05/81); see also Andrews (2021: 198-99).

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the family lawyers submitted a formal complaint to the High Court, seeking to quash the
inquest and establish a new one. Although this request was finally rejected, a High Court
judge acknowledged that the inquest was a ‘very serious irregularity’ (cited in Times
13/05/81a). Furthermore, the bereaved families and NCMAC campaigners, though
violating procedural regulations, made an effort to raise their voice during the inquest
sessions. This politicisation from within was accompanied by regular protest rallies in
front of the County Hall where the inquest took place. These protest activities, however,
fell far short of the mass mobilisation in the context of the Black People’s Action Day,
with no more than 100-200 of participants respectively. 90 In spite of this lack of wider
political and media support, the bereaved families and their legal counsel attempted to
challenge the inquest’s outcome. In July 1982, the family lawyers appealed to the High
Court for a new inquest, making the case that ‘[i]f the jury had been properly directed
they would have returned a verdict that the fire had been deliberately caused and a verdict
of unlawful killing.’ (cited in Guardian 06/07/82) However, it was rejected by a divisional
court of three judges on the grounds that inquest’s minimum standards were met
(Guardian 07/07/82) With this rejection of the appeal, the possibilities of challenging the
official interpretation of events on legal grounds became increasingly exhausted.

Before moving on to examining the hegemonic political and media responses, I

would like to point to one NCMAC initiative that did not have a direct impact upon the
case, but nonetheless represented a highly innovative type of political practice. Following
the unsuccessful struggles over the inquest, the NCMAC attempted to set up an
International Commission of Inquiry (ICI) which, according to internal correspondence,
was supposed to be composed of ‘workers, students, unemployeds and academics from
Africa, the Caribbean, the US, the UK and Western Europe’ (GPIA NCM 2/4/1/1; see
also Andrews 2021: 200-01). Although the establishment of such a commission
eventually failed, it was a remarkable initiative whose political significance can only be
properly understood if it is put in a broader historical context: For it was the first time that
activists refused to confine themselves to the routine of first demanding a public inquiry
and then criticising the government for failing to establish one. Instead, they went on the
offensive and attempted to establish an independent inquiry by themselves. Thus, while

90
In contrast to these actual protest dynamics, both the Metropolitan Police and the coroner wrote in internal
reports that they had ‘grave fears about the possibility of rioting’ (LMA 4463-B-01-007) during or
following the inquest.

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the NCMAC activists were primarily informed by an autonomist approach, they
nonetheless considered it necessary to enter and subvert official public terrains and
institutional procedures from within.

6.2.4 Hegemonic political and media responses

The first news coverage was largely oriented towards the evolving police story, although
there were various differences between the analysed newspapers. The Daily Mail claimed
that ‘[t]here is not a shred of evidence to suggest that there was any racial motive behind
the blaze’ (Daily Mail 30/01/81) and quickly amplified the evolving police story that
Black party guests caused the fire (Daily Mail 25/01/81). Some reporters also attempted
to combine the coverage of the New Cross fire with stories about the ‘problem of rowdy
all-night parties’ (Daily Mail 19/01/81), and about alleged attempts by the ‘militant left’
to ‘exploit [the] party fire tragedy’ (Daily Mail 30/01/81; see also Daily Mail 25/01/81).
Hence, the real scandal was seen less in the death of thirteen young people but more in
the political and cultural activities of Black youths and left-wing activists. Particularly
noteworthy was the immediate portrayal of the teenager’s party in ways that drew on
classic stereotypes about the alleged pathologies of Black (sub-)cultural life. The Daily
Mirror reported on a ‘murder hunt’, but instead of discussing the possibility of a racist
motive turned the spotlight on the local Black community itself by pointing to an
unidentified ‘coloured man’ (Daily Mirror 19/01/81). The Guardian, too, based its first
coverage on the early police stories but was more ambivalent about the cause of the fire.
While acknowledging that it ‘may have been started by a firebomb attack’, the author
nonetheless highlighted ‘there was no evidence to suggest that racial motives were behind
the blaze’ (Guardian 20/01/81). Similarly, the Times framed the fire as an ‘arson attack’
(Times 30/01/81) but raised doubts about a potential racist motive (Times 11/02/81). It
was this quick rejection or questioning of a racist motive and the occasional blaming of
the party guests themselves which was interpreted by the NCMAC as a fundamental bias
against the concerns of the bereaved families, friends, and survivors. On 25 February
1981, it published a press statement in which especially the Metropolitan Police and Daily
Mail was accused of criminalising survivors of the party in order to ‘divert attention’ from
upcoming protest activities (cited in: LMA 4463/B/08/01/002). Another aspect that added
to this frustration and anger was the lack of sympathy expressed by leading politicians
and government representatives. Although internal correspondence shows that Home

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Secretary William Whitelaw was informed one day after the fire, an official response was
issued only after the government received a written request by the NCMAC and a local
clergyman (GPIA NCM 1/2/4/1; TNA HO 287/2992: items 27 and 30). More than five
weeks later, Prime Minister Thatcher sent a letter of sympathy to Sybil Phoenix, founder
of the Moonshot Youth Club, but not directly to the bereaved families (ibid.).
Furthermore, it was only after six weeks that the New Cross fire was mentioned in
parliament by Labour MP Christopher Price who had initiated the above-mentioned
meeting between the NCMAC and Labour MPs (HC Deb 05/03/81: 403). This was in
stark contrast to another deadly fire incident that occurred in the Stardust nightclub in
Dublin on 14 February 1981. In this case, both the Queen and Prime Minister immediately
responded with condolence letters and the parliament adjourned for the day in respect of
the victims (Observer 08/03/81; see also Andrews 2021: 189-90).

According to Sivanandan, the Day of Action ‘had been, for its size and length and
spread of time, a peaceful march. There had been a few skirmishes, a window or two
broken and a few arrests made.’ (Sivanandan 2008: 137) Nonetheless, it was this minor
element of violence which became the dominant theme in hegemonic political and
mainstream media discourses. In a television interview, for instance, Metropolitan Police
Commissioner David McNee acknowledged the peaceful character of large parts of the
demonstration but warned against the danger of ‘militants’ seeking to incite conflicts
between the wider Black community and the police: ‘They are also in Deptford
motivating and urging the black community to confront the police. (cited in: Times
26/06/81) The Times characterised the demonstrations in military rhetoric as an outburst
of ‘Westend violence’ (Times 03/03/81a), with police officers being ‘bombarded’
(03/03/81b) with bottles, bricks, and missiles, therefore needing ‘reinforcements on
horseback to control the surging demonstrators’ (ibid.). The Daily Mirror headlined its
immediate coverage ‘confrontation’ (Daily Mirror 03/03/81a) and further symbolised the
protest as ‘the battle of London’ (Daily Mirror 03/03/81b), triggered by an ‘army of
marchers’ (Daily Mirror 03/03/81c) that ‘flooded into the City’ (Daily Mirror 03/03/81a),
including a ‘200-strong breakaway group’ (ibid.: 1) that ‘ran amok’ (ibid.) and ‘attacked
anyone and anything that got in their way’ (ibid.). The suspicion of a racist motive was
strongly dismissed and, using the strategy of victim-perpetrator reversal, transformed into
the accusation of ‘racial hatred by Black extremists’ (ibid.). The Daily Mail portrayed
conflicts between protesters and police as a moment ‘[w]hen the black tide met the thin
blue line’ (Daily Mail 03/03/81). The demonstration was thus imagined as a disaster

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scenario composed of ‘[y]oung black troublemakers’ (ibid.) carrying out street robberies,
burglaries, as well as attacks on police officers, journalists, and bystanders. All these
contributions illustrate that there was a strong tendency to demonise the collective action
of Black people associated with one of London’s “inner city” areas as nothing else than
acts of inciting “racial hatred” and “race riots”. Particularly remarkable in this context
was a Daily Mail article that offered its readers a ‘timetable of violence in the street’ with
an overview of ‘the recent race riots record in Britain’ (Daily Mail 06/07/81). Here the
Black People’s Day of Action was associated not only with anti-racist protests (such as
the protest rally in support of the Mangrove Restaurant in Notting Hill in 1970), but also
with racist riots (such as those in Notting Hill in 1958 and Brick Lane in 1978).
Furthermore, direct references were made to episodes of urban unrest, such as in April
1980 when ‘St Paul’s district becomes a “no go” area when blacks reacting to a drugs
raid, stage an orgy of violence and looting.’ (ibid.) Similar to the protest dynamics
following the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar, then, the Black People’s Action Day
became the subject of an ideological displacement in which the relation between
perpetrator and victim, attack and defence, was transformed into a relation between two
groups of perpetrators equally responsible for damaging the public order and racial
harmony.

At the same time, there was a smaller segment of left-liberal and social-democratic
discourse that developed a less hostile portrayal of the demonstration and acknowledged
the urgency to tackle racist violence. The Guardian, for instance, focused on the
demonstration’s overall peaceful character and acknowledged the underlying frustration
with the police investigation and government response as well as the everyday experience
of racist threats and attacks: ‘On their own evidence many Asians, West Indians and other
minority groups are being subjected to almost daily violence and harassment from people
who want them to get the message that they are not wanted in Britain. (Guardian
04/03/81) Similar concerns have been raised by various left-wing Labour politicians as
well as the Labour leadership, with Foot promising that ‘one of the preeminent tasks of
the next Labour Government will be to do everything in their power to root out the real
causes of racialism in our society.’ (cited in Guardian 09/03/81) These statements have
triggered immediate criticism from police officials and Conservative politicians. Right-
wing Conservative MP John Wheeler, for instance, was quoted describing them as ‘an act
of the most wanton extremism’ (cited in Daily Mail 09/03/81). Foot responded in
parliament that he did not want ‘to prejudge in any way the investigation that is taking

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place officially’ and apologised for his statement (HC Deb 10/03/81: 756). This indicates
that the Labour leadership made some attempts to support the case for a stronger state
response to tackling racism, but eventually backed away from an open confrontation with
those political actors responsible for the state’s inaction against violent racism.
Furthermore, I did not find evidence of more concerted political support from the Labour
left apart from statements of solidarity from individual politicians.

Looking at the wider media discourse about the inquest, there was indeed a
relatively high degree of public attention to the statements and activities of the bereaved
families, their legal representatives and the NCMAC. At the same time, however, this
coverage showed strong tendencies to discredit these perspectives, especially of those
who put the New Cross fire, the police investigation, and the inquest in the context of
racism. The Daily Mail summarised the inquest as ‘13 days that became a trial of the
police’ (Daily Mail 14/05/81) and claimed that the real cause of the inquest’s failure was
the families’ and their supporters’ insistence on a racist motive: ‘Throughout the
proceedings, the race issue, like a grenade with its pin pulled, rolled round the court
threatening to cause permanent damage at each outburst. […] The fact that it [the
evidence] became so battered and bruised as to become unrecognisable to those who
mattered most, makes what might have been an appropriate and dignified postmortem
now only a dress rehearsal for more pain.’ (ibid.) In another comment with the title ‘When
distrust smothers justice’ (ibid.: 14) these claims were combined with the negative
portrayal of the surviving witnesses, and the exoneration of the police from the allegation
of misconduct: ‘The decision by so many Black witnesses to disavow their earlier
statements […] raises far more questions about the motivation and reliability of the
witnesses themselves than it does about police methods of interrogation.’ (ibid.) The
strong usage of metaphors of violence – ‘grenade’, ‘smothers’, ‘battered and bruised’ –
can be interpreted as a strategy of denying the experience of racist violence by
reimagining the victims as perpetrators of violence. Such attempts to translate the New
Cross case into a story about hysterical bereaved families, unruly Black youths and a
smear campaign against the police were not restricted to the right-wing tabloid press. In
its editorial, the Times described the inquest as ‘rampant with grief and paranoia and
replete with political implications’, and commented that ‘the original purpose of the
proceedings has all but been forgotten, and a trial has been substituted instead, with critics
putting the police in the dock.’ (Times 13/05/81b) The Observer, too, made various efforts
to attack the credibility of the witnesses, both during and in the aftermath of the inquest

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(Observer 26/04/81, 17/05/81, 24/05/81). In one comment, they were stereotyped as
deviant youths ‘having smoked weed (marijuana), drunk alcohol, broken bail curfews and
lied to the police.’ (Observer 03/05/81) The Guardian, in contrast, showed greater
sympathies for the concerns of the bereaved families, and expressed stronger criticism of
both the police investigation and the coroner’s performance. Nevertheless, even this more
favourable coverage was combined with attempts to delegitimise those actors who raised
the issue of racism. This was done by constructing a normative distinction between the
bereaved families and the NCMAC, with the latter being portrayed as politically
exploiting the suffering of the former: ‘The misery and suspicion were fuelled and
exploited by the New Cross Massacre Action Committee. It was decided right from the
start that the tragedy was a racialist “massacre”. There was not a shred of evidence to
back up this assumption’ (Guardian 14/05/81). Hence, in this account of the inquest, a
triad of police, coroner and NCMAC was made responsible for the unsatisfactory
outcome of the inquest.

6.3 Interim Conclusion

In this case study, it was shown that the New Cross case became a crucial moment in the
wider struggle over racist violence and state racism in post-war Britain. While the
catastrophic incident was seen by minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist political actors as
the most deadly example of a much broader pattern of racist violence, there was a strong
tendency within hegemonic political discussions and institutional domains to deny the
possibility of racism as an underlying motive, to put blame on the Black victims and
survivors themselves, and to attack the legitimacy of Black collective action and self-
defence against racist attacks. These hostile discursive responses were informed by racist
imagery about the allegedly “violent” and “disruptive” nature of Black community life,
especially in urban working-class areas such as Deptford. As was discussed in the
previous section, such notions played a key role in the ideological displacement of the
socio-economic and socio-geographical crisis tendencies that figured prominently within,
but were not limited to, Thatcherite political discourse in the late 1970s and early 1980.
Among the social-democratic and liberal segments of public discourse, there was a
stronger tendency to express sympathies with the victims, survivors and bereaved of the
New Cross fire. At the same time, however, those actors joined the political right in
discrediting Black political agency, especially in its confrontational form, as a form of

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extremism that endangers Britain’s public order. Furthermore, while these actors were
outspoken in their critique of certain institutional selectivities by which the inquest was
characterised, they were reluctant to amplify the demand for more comprehensive state
responses, such as the establishment of a public inquiry.

Despite this hostile political and institutional atmosphere, the New Cross case
became a remarkable moment of collective action against racist hostility and violence,
and for Black political autonomy. Similar to earlier struggles against racist violence, such
as the protest activities in the aftermath of the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar analysed
in the previous chapter, this episode was characterised by the tension between
integrationist and autonomist strategic approaches. Most strikingly, however, the political
actors involved in the NCMAC found a way to combine both approaches into a coherent
political campaign: They went on the offensive both on the streets of central London and
in the corridors of the British criminal justice system. Furthermore, certain aspects of their
campaign, in particular the cooperation with a group of Labour MPs, can be characterised
as an example of what Shukra et al. call a ‘transitional public sphere’ (Shukra et al. 2004).
Overall, however, the NCMAC activists remained informed by the principle of Black
autonomy and the radical critique of both state power and mainstream politics. For
instance, while they acknowledged the fact that the criminal justice is an important terrain
of establishing the truth, they refused to simply adapt to its procedures and routines.
Instead, they experimented with practices of ‘transgressive contention’ (McAdam et al.
2001: 8) in order to challenge their underpinning selectivities. Furthermore, they
continued to emphasise the significance of community-based self-organisation and only
incidentally attempted to establish links with hegemonic political actors. Although the
NCMAC was eventually unsuccessful, it became an important source of inspiration for
later political campaigns – including those that will be discussed in the next section.

6.4 Case study: The political conflicts over the shooting of Cherry Groce and the
death of Cynthia Jarrett during police raids in Brixton and Tottenham, 1985-1987

In this second case study, I will develop a systematic examination of the political struggles
that have emerged in the aftermath the shooting of Cherry Groce and the death of Cynthia
Jarrett during police raids on their homes in late September and early October 1985.
Furthermore, I will explore in which ways these cases were aligned the broader
configuration of public discourses and political conflicts analysed in the first section of
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this chapter. My overall aim will be to offer a more systematic reconstruction of the Groce
and Jarrett cases. In many authoritative accounts of the politics of (anti-)racism, both
cases are usually mentioned as “trigger events” that have led to urban unrest in Brixton
and Tottenham in the September and October 1985. However, while the latter have
received much academic attention, the discussion of the former has largely been reduced
to short comments (see for example Bowling/Phillips 2002: 133; Gilroy 1987: 327; Hall
1988: 75; Perry 2016: 246; Solomos 1988: 198; Waters 2018: 176-77). In the following,
I will instead demonstrate that both cases have become the subject of a plethora of
political struggles in various public and institutional terrains.

6.4.1 The cases of Cherry Groce and Cynthia Jarrett in the wider context of racist
police violence in the early to mid-1980s

In the early morning of 28 September 1985, a Metropolitan Police unit comprising seven
armed police officers and a dog handler raided the home of Dorothy “Cherry” Groce, a
37-year-old Black woman, who was resident in Normandy Road in Brixton. The official
purpose of the raid was to arrest and interview her 19-year-old son Michael Groce in
relation to an armed robbery carried out by two unidentified men on 10 September, and
an associated police raid on 26 September during which an unidentified person fired a
shotgun and escaped. However, police assumptions that Michael Groce lived at his
mother’s home were false. Immediately after the police unit forcefully opened the front
door with a sledgehammer, Cherry Groce was shot in the shoulder by one of the officers,
Police Constable Douglas Lovelock (TNA HO 287/3776: item 6; IRR 1991: 26). The
police bullet damaged Groce’s spine and paralysed her permanently. She had to use a
wheelchair and was experiencing mental health issues for the rest of her life. On 5 October
1985, less than a week after the shooting of Groce, Cynthia Jarrett, a 49-year-old Black
woman, died during a police raid on her home in Thorpe Road in Tottenham. Similar to
the Groce shooting, this raid followed an earlier incident at the Broadwater Farm Estate
during which a police unit approached and arrested her 23-year-old son Floyd on the
suspicion of theft and for allegedly assaulting a police officer. Jarrett’s daughter Patricia
reported that during the police raid on their home the officers did not provide a search
warrant and behaved in an aggressive manner. Most notably, she stated that one of the
police officers, Detective Constable Michael Randall, violently pushed her mother aside
which caused her to fall down and sustain a heart attack. She added that, while she and

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her brother Michael were calling an ambulance and trying to resuscitate her mother, the
police officers at first did not offer any assistance and continued their search; and that it
was only after more police forces arrived that Randall provided first aid (Ward 1986: 53;
IRR 1987: 10-11). Cynthia Jarrett was pronounced dead on arrival at Middlesex hospital
(IRR 1991: 25). During the raid, the police officers reportedly did not find any stolen
goods (Guardian 07/10/85). On 13 December 1985, Floyd Jarrett was cleared of the
assault charge and received £350 in compensation for his arrest (IRR 1987: 9).

Both incidents occurred within a wider climate of state repression and police
violence against Black and Asian communities resident in urban working-class areas
which, as was discussed in the previous chapters, has a longer history that can be traced
back at least to the early 1960s (Humphry 1972; Hunte 1965). By late 1970s and early
1980s, however, these repressive practices not only intensified, but also took new forms.
The most important change in police strategy was the execution of large-scale police
operations on the pretext of tackling street crime. The Metropolitan Police’s “Operation
Swamp” in Brixton in April 1981 over the course of which hundreds of (especially male)
Black residents were stopped and searched is the most prominent example insofar as it
triggered large-scale protest dynamics and led to the establishment the Scarman Inquiry
in 1981 (Bowling et al. 2011: 614-5). But it was only the tip of the iceberg, with more
reports of police operations taking place not only in Brixton itself (Observer 19/07/81;
Guardian 02/12/81; Searchlight 12/82: 16-17; 11/86: 16-17), but also in other urban
working-class areas such as Hackney and Notting Hill in London, Moss Side in
Manchester, or St Pauls in Bristol (Keith 1993: 122-46; Searchlight 06/82: 17). The
Broadwater Farm Estate, too, witnessed recurrent police raids in the early 1980s,
including a two-day deployment of large numbers of riot police in November 1983 (IRR
BHC 01/04/04/01/14/16; Searchlight 01/83: 15). The early 1980s also saw a series of
police raids on predominantly Asian-owned workplaces in London and other urban
centres on the pretence of detaining people stigmatised as “illegal immigrants”
(Miles/Phizacklea 1984: 106-7). It is in this context that the growing problem of deadly
state violence needs to be situated. According to a report by the Institute of Race
Relations, the documented number of Black deaths in state custody increased from 9 cases
between 1969 and 1975 and 8 cases between 1976 and 1980 to 18 cases between 1981
and 1985 and 40 cases between 1986 and 1990 (IRR 1991: 47-57). It is also in this context
that the collective fight against racist police violence, which had already been on the
agenda since at least the early 1960s, gained momentum and increasingly focused on

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Black deaths in state custody. For instance, family campaigns emerged in response to the
case of Michael Ferreira who was stabbed by a group of NF activists and died in hospital
after being interrogated (rather than medically treated) at Stoke Newington police station
in December 1980; the case of Winston Rose who died in a police van after being
restrained by police officers taking him to a psychiatric hospital in July 1981; the case of
Colin Roach who died of a gun wound which he sustained in custody at Newington Stoke
Police Station in Hackney, London in January 1983; or the case of Paul Ducatt who died
under contested circumstances at Ashford Remand Centre in March 1986 (Athwal 2002;
Searchlight 09/81: 19; 03/83: 18-19).

6.4.2 Minority and anti-racist protest dynamics as well as urban unrest

Within hours after both police raids, hundreds of people engaged in protest activities at
the local police stations in Brixton and Tottenham. After the shooting of Groce, a group
of at least ‘several hundreds’ (Guardian 29/09/85) gathered first in front of her home and
then in front of Brixton police station. Similarly, the death of Jarrett led to protest
activities with more than 100 participants in front of Tottenham police station.
Furthermore, in both cases, deputations of bereaved and affected family members,
community activists and local councillors registered formal complaints at Brixton and
Tottenham police station, thus immediately initiating the legal struggles over the criminal
culpability of the involved police officers. It was also in the first days after the police
raids that the Groce Family Support Campaign and the Jarrett Family Public Inquiry
Campaign were founded (IRR BHC 01/04/04/01/14/16). These campaigns became
crucial organisational bases for the upcoming political and legal protest activities. The
most important demand was a public inquiry into the circumstances of the shooting of
Groce and the death of Jarrett. There were also wider organised political responses to the
police raids. Following the death of Jarrett, for instance, two separate meetings were held:
The first meeting took place at the West Indian Cultural Centre in Notting Hill, with
around 40 participants and speakers primarily from established minority organisations
that had experience in public campaigning and lobbying, such as the West Indian
Standing Conference as well as local councillors such as Bernie Grant and Steve Banerji.
The second meeting took place at the Broadwater Farm Youth Association, with around
70 primarily young local residents. The Broadwater Farm inquiry reported that
established community figures and local politicians, such as Dolly Kiffin, Martha Osamor

163
and again Bernie Grant, were present, but were not allowed to speak and were instead
confronted with demands for immediate political action rather than the conventional
approach of issuing formal resolutions (IRR BHC 01/04/04/01/14/16). This suggests that
– similar to earlier moments such as in the aftermath of the killing of Gurdip Singh
Chaggar – the initial responses were characterised by a considerable degree of
disagreement between a younger generation of street-oriented activists and an older
generation of established community leaders and local politicians. What made this
episode specific, however, was that the pressure from the former had a considerable
influence on the latter. I will come back to his point in section 6.3.4.

Given the existing state of research, I do not intend to provide a detailed

reconstruction of the large-scale confrontations between protesters and police forces in
central Brixton in late September 1985 and the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham in
early October 1985. Although it is now difficult to reconstruct the exact sequence of
events, communal figures have indicated that a spiral of escalation was at play in which
the deployed police forces played an active part. For instance, Dolly Kiffin stated:

No way did we want to have a riot for a riot’s sake, after so much achievement. The
riot must have been triggered off by something: the police stopped the youths from
marching to the police station, even though they had enough people to divide the
youths and let some of them into the station. (cited in: GPIA GB LRA 01-150).

The overall scope of the confrontations was comparable to the 1981 Brixton unrest.
However, it was especially one incident in Tottenham that was historically
unprecedented: On the night of 5 October, 40-year-old Police Constable Keith Blakelock
was murdered by a group of people who were likely involved in the confrontations with
the police on the Broadwater Farm Estate (Guardian 01/10/85).

I would like to put a stronger focus on the political responses to the Groce and
Jarrett cases after the Brixton and Tottenham unrest as these have rarely been examined
in the literature. More specifically, I would like to focus on two responses: First, the
Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign, which had already been formed in the early 1980s,
took on the lead in supporting those affected by the subsequent wave of state repression
(see section 6.4.4). Its evaluation of the broader political situation was far from optimistic.
While the Tottenham unrest was described as an ‘uprising’ which was seen as a ‘direct
consequence of police harassment of the black community of this family and the murder

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of Mrs. Jarrett` (cited in IRR BHC 01/04/04/01/14/16), the police response was
characterised as a ‘paramilitary style police occupation’ (ibid.) and a ‘calculated act of
revenge’ (ibid.) in order ‘to stop Broadwater Farm youth from taking part in a peaceful
protest. The police saw this as their big chance to smash the youths on the Farm under the
guise of community policing and the usual lies about drug peddling.’ (ibid.) Further
embedding these recent police attacks in a longer history of ‘ever increasing state attacks
on the democratic rights of protest’ (ibid.), the mid-1980s were seen as an unprecedented
moment of racist hostility. Subverting the mainstream media discourse about “no-go
areas”, the Broadwater Farm estate was portrayed as an unliveable space of repressive
policing ‘more reminiscent of the North of Ireland or colonial experience. In its intensity,
its length, its impact and terrorisation – it is qualitatively new to mainland Britain.’ (ibid.)
The purpose of these statements, however, was not to spread defeatism but rather to make
a case for community self-defence as the only way forward:

When a whole community is aggrieved and outraged – as the Tottenham community was
following Mrs Jarrett’s cruel death – and the seeks to protest and make its grievance public,
only to come under fierce, physical attack by the police, then that community has a right to
defend itself. (ibid.)

Second, such calls for community action were transformed into a remarkable moment of
mass mobilisation. In November 1985, an alliance of both of the family justice campaigns
and various local defence groups such as the Brixton Legal Defence Group, the
Community Defence Campaign and the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign cooperated
in order to organise a major protest demonstration in central London. The main slogan of
the demonstration was ‘Out of Control, Out of Order – One Law for Blue, One Law for
Black’, with the more specific demands to ‘Charge Lovelock and Randall! End Racist
Violence!’ (ibid.) With both these slogans, the Groce and Jarrett cases were put into the
context of an official culture of impunity for police forces and the racist selectivities of
the criminal justice system. Furthermore, as one of the organisers reported, the attempt to
organise a mass demonstration was inspired by the success of the Black People’s Action
Day discussed in the previous section. According to estimations by the organisers, the
call attracted more than 5,000 people who were able to take the streets in central London
without any severe confrontations with the police (Guardian 12/11/85). Although the
participation was significantly lower than in March 1981, it can nonetheless be seen as
one of the major protest rallies against racist violence in British history. Both these

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political responses indicate that there was still a great need to combine localised forms of
self-organisation with large-scale street mobilisation.

6.4.3 Inquest and criminal trial

It was not only the wider political mobilisation but also the legal component of the justice
campaigns that resembled earlier approaches such as that of the New Cross Massacre
campaign. Both families immediately sought legal representation, received support from
a wider network of organisations, called for public inquiries, and announced private
prosecutions against the police officers in case the authorities would fail to put them on
trial. The particular institutional terrains of the criminal justice system on which these
demands were fought for, however, were different given the nature of the two incidents
of police violence. While the struggle for justice in the case of Cherry Groce reached the
point where the shooting police officer Lovelock was put on trial (stage four in Bowling’s
model), the legal process in the case of Cynthia Jarrett did not go beyond the inquest into
her death (stage three).

The inquest into the death of Cynthia Jarrett took place between 27 November and
04 December 1985. It was characterised by marked conflicts between the Jarrett family
and the Metropolitan Police about every aspect of the police raid that had led to the death
of Jarrett. The most important result was that the jury returned a verdict of accidental
death, which means that it acknowledged Randall’s physical interference as a contributing
factor but found no evidence that he recklessly or intentionally caused harm to Jarrett
(Guardian 05/12/85). The Jarrett family interpreted this verdict as a vindication of their
accusation of police misconduct and as proof that the involved police officers were lying.
The inquest also became part of a wider discussion about the efficacy and independence
of the police complaints procedure which, as was discussed in the previous section, had
changed earlier in 1985 with the formation of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA).
During the hearings, it was revealed that police counsel made use of statements that
Cynthia’s daughter Patricia Jarrett had made in confidence to the PCA investigators. The
family lawyers saw this as evidence that the PCA had leaked confidential information to
the Metropolitan Police Commissioner who then forwarded it to the police counsel. In
this sense, the Jarrett inquest became the first moment in which the PCA’s lack of
independence was exposed, thus contributing to an ongoing discussion about the
necessity of police reform beyond the scope of the Scarman Inquiry’s recommendations.
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Overall, however, the family only achieved a partial success in their legal struggle for
justice. In April 1986, the Director of Public Prosecutions announced that no criminal
proceedings would be initiated against the four officers who had carried out the police
raid (Guardian 15/04/86).

Compared to the Jarrett case, the police shooting of Cherry Groce was more likely
to trigger criminal proceedings. Indeed, after the PCA had concluded that Lovelock could
be criminally liable, he was put on trial in January 1987 on charges of unlawfully and
maliciously wounding. Although the police officers involved and their legal
representatives made every effort to justify their own behaviour and the overall raid, they
were confronted with serious accusations of misconduct. Most notably, Groce testified
that the police officers did not announce their identity during the raid, that Lovelock
directly pointed the gun at her heart, and that she attempted to move away from the police
officers while she was being shot, thus suggesting that Lovelock chose a shoot-to-kill
approach in a situation which did not pose any serious threat (Guardian 07/01/87; Times
07/01/87). Furthermore, it was revealed that the police officer in charge of the raid had
decided against previous surveillance of the home in order to establish the presence of
Michael Groce. As the police officer admitted this decision was based on the assumption
that a more extensive police operation should be avoided because ‘the area was
particularly hostile to police’ (cited in Guardian 07/01/87) This statement shows how the
organisation of the police raid was directly informed by the above-outlined discourse
about areas such as Brixton as a “dangerous area” that can only be controlled by way of
repressive – and in this case even irregular – forms of policing. This approach was further
justified on an ideological level by various attempts to frame Michael Groce as a
dangerous Black man who would be ready to use deadly firearms and thus needs to be
approached accordingly. Lovelock, for instance, described him as a ‘very violent young
black man likely to be armed, with the ability to fire’ (Times 06/01/87) and a ‘desperate
man likely to go to any lengths to avoid arrest’ (Guardian 08/01/87). Despite these
inconsistencies in the police account of the incident, the jury cleared Lovelock of all
charges. A contributing factor to this decision might have been the judge himself who, in
his summary of the evidence, attempted to emphasise the “good character” of Lovelock:
‘You should bear the fact that he has a good character in mind when you consider whether
he has spoken the truth or not, in particular when he says: “I did not deliberately fire the
gun.”’ (cited in Guardian 15/01/87) Moreover, neither Lovelock nor the other officers
involved in the police raid had to face any disciplinary charges. With regard to the police

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operations that preceded the shooting of his mother, however, the police took some action.
Nine officers involved in previous police raids in search of Michael Groce were facing
various disciplinary charges. In June 1987, seven officers were cleared, while two officers
were reprimanded on charges of drinking on duty and making false statements (Guardian
03/02/87; 20/06/87). Overall, however, the trial turned out to be a setback for the bereaved
family. The family lawyer Paul Boateng concluded:

The fact that my client received a life-shattering blow at the hands of Inspector
Lovelock remains unaltered by this verdict. She will have to live with the
consequences of his actions for the rest of her life, just as this officer will have to
live with the knowledge of what he has done to her for the rest of his. Nothing can
ever really compensate her for what has happened. (cited in Guardian 16/01/87)

6.4.4 Hegemonic political and media responses

The first government and police responses to both incidents were characterised by a
combination of announcing judicial investigations while attempting to maintain a low
profile in terms of government and police responsibility. In contrast to the New Cross
Fire case, Home Secretary David Hurd immediately sent his condolences to the members
of the Groce family (TNA HO 287/3776: item 2, 10). Apart from these symbolic gestures,
however, the Home Office turned down the demands for public inquiries into the police
raids (Guardian 30/09/85a; Guardian 08/10/85). The Metropolitan Police was even more
reluctant to respond to the demands of the families. For instance, it refused to suspend the
responsible police officers. In internal correspondence, this was justified on the pretext
of avoiding a ‘morale problem’ among other firearms officers (TNA HO 287/3776: item
11). It was only after the PCA highlighted strong indications of a criminal culpability in
early October that Lovelock was suspended on full pay for the duration of the
investigation (Guardian 05/10/85).

During its annual conference, the Labour Party leadership passed a motion which
condemned the shooting of Groce and supported the call for public inquiries as well as
criminal investigations into the police raids (see Times 01/10/85). Nonetheless, similar to
the liberal criticism of the Scarman Inquiry, it stopped short of identifying racism as an
underlying factor. But there was also a number of left-wing Labour politicians, some of
whom were from racialised minority communities, who formulated a forceful critique of

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both police, governmental and popular racism. Bernie Grant, for instance, who had only
recently become Haringey Council leader as a result of an internal split over the rate-
capping issue, strongly condemned the death of Cynthia Jarrett as follows:

For the second time in a week, a black woman had been killed by officers of the
state. Police behaviour is totally unacceptable. The force is out of control. The local
police chiefs should resign immediately if any faith is to be restored. Haringey
Council will ensure Mrs Jarrett’s name is remembered as a victim of state
oppression. (cited in Guardian 07/10/85)

The hegemonic media discourse was characterised by strong tendencies to uncritically

forward the official account of the police raids as individual accidents without further
political significance. The Daily Mail offered an interpretation that immediately
exonerated the responsible police officers from personal responsibility and instead
blamed the sons for the violent outcome of the raids. For instance, it was claimed that the
police officers involved in the shooting of Cherry Groce did not trigger or escalate the
situation, but only responded in a state of ‘simple stark fear’ (Daily Mail 30/09/85) to a
potentially life-threatening situation provoked by Michael Groce who was framed as a
dangerous criminal ready to shoot. Although the Times coverage was less accusatory vis-
à-vis the family members, it nonetheless attempted to forward and justify the police story
(Times 30/09/85b; 02/10/85). The coverage of both the Daily Mirror and the Guardian
was more ambivalent. In some articles, the involved police officers were shielded from
any responsibility, with characterisations of Lovelock as ‘luckless’ (Guardian 30/09/85b),
and of Jarrett’s death as ‘of natural causes’ (Daily Mirror 08/10/85a) and ‘by heart attack’
(Daily Mirror 14/10/85a). Other articles, however, expressed stronger police criticism. In
a comment titled ‘Too many “tragic events”’ (30/09/85b), the Daily Mirror put the Groce
shooting in the context of a series of police shootings which have raised public attention
over the past years. Similarly, in a Guardian comment, a barrister characterised the
shooting of Groce as the result of a fundamental lack of police training and especially
‘the police’s reckless use of dangerous weapons.’ (Guardian 18/10/85) These
interventions were similar to the Labour leadership’s position insofar as the police
operations were condemned but also detached from questions of racism.

A theme that ran through all the official and media responses was the representation
of the victims in terms of gender and family roles. Despite their political differences, all
the analysed official and news responses showed a strong tendency to characterise Groce

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and Jarrett in their roles as “mother”, “grandmother” or “housewife”, usually leaving out
other aspects of their biographies. For instance, Jarrett, who had moved from Jamaica to
England in 1958, was also a renowned community figure and a longstanding
manufacturing worker who was made redundant following the 1982 closure of the
National Plastics factory in Walthamstow (IRR BHC 01/04/04/01/14/16). The political
implications of these gendered representations were highly ambiguous. On the one hand,
various segments of the media discourse, especially liberal and social-democratic
commentators, drew on feminised notions of the “private home” as a realm of innocence
in order to scandalise the increasingly invasive tactics of the police (see for example Daily
Mirror 30/09/85b; Guardian 06/12/85; Times 17/12/85). On the other hand, these
narratives could easily be incorporated into a framework that nonetheless justified the
over-policing of young Black males in the public sphere. For instance, all the analysed
newspapers, even those critical of the police raids, published stories which contributed to
the criminalisation of Michael Groce (Daily Mail 14/12/85; Daily Mirror 01/10/85;
Guardian 22/03/86; Times 30/09/85a). Furthermore, the Daily Mail and Guardian
published reports according to which Michael Groce “blamed himself” for the incidents,
thus suggesting that Cherry Groce became a victim of the criminality of her son, rather
than the actions of police officers (Daily Mail 22/03/86; Guardian 22/03/86). The
Metropolitan Police, too, was reported as attempting to blame the outcome of the police
raids on the sons’ allegedly aggressive behaviour (see for example Guardian 07/10/85).

Given the discourse on “urban unrest’ and “race riots” since the mid-1970s, it is
unsurprising that the confrontations in Brixton and Tottenham were imagined either as
“race riots” or as “pathological violence”. Both the Thatcher government and
Metropolitan Police interpreted the Brixton and Tottenham unrest as the breakdown of
law and order emerging from violent criminal milieus flourishing in inner city areas. For
instance, the Police Federation of England and Wales published a report which
stigmatised communal life at the Broadwater Farm Estate as an ‘ugly reality of criminal
gangs ruling the estate, robbing and terrorising the inhabitants.’ (cited in: Gifford 1986a)
Home Secretary Douglas Hurd proclaimed in parliament that ‘[t]he design of housing
estates like that at Tottenham poses particular difficulties in such circumstances. […]
There must be no no-go areas in any of our cities.’ (HC Deb 21/10/85: 30) At the 1985
Conservative Party annual conference, Thatcher stated that ‘[w]hoever these people are
who riot, burn and murder; whoever they are organised by, there is no excuse, no
justification whatsoever, for such crime and vandalism. […] It isn't the police who create

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threats to public order.’ (Thatcher 1985) Furthermore, in its official report to Haringey
Police Community Consultative Group, the Metropolitan Police claimed that a small
group of ringleaders had been pre-planning the riots for months, including the acquisition
and storage of ‘lakes of patrol’ (cited in TNA HO 325/712). This explanatory framework
had a crucial impact on the official (mis-) representation and (mis-)recognition of police
misconduct in general and racist police violence in particular. First, the talk about criminal
milieus and unprovoked violence served to discursively background or repress the
shooting of Groce and death of Jarrett as the main “trigger events” of the Brixton and
Tottenham unrest. It also served to re-interpret the role of the police, not as an escalating
factor, but as the main victim of the violent confrontations that followed the police raids.
Based on such a narrative, the government strongly refused to commission a public
inquiry into the causes of the riots. Furthermore, it announced the massive increase in
police operations against street and organised crime, as well as the use of plastic bullets,
CS gas and water cannons in future riot scenarios (Ward 1986: 65-73). During a telephone
conversation with Hurd which is documented in the form of minutes in a police report
from 11 October 1985, Thatcher revealed her willingness to resort to extreme measures
in order to suppress the potential for urban unrest, suggesting that ‘[i]t might even become
necessary to demolish houses in difficult estates in order to help policing.’ (NA HO
287/3776: item 28). The Metropolitan Police had already lobbied for such an approach in
the previous years. In an official report from 1984, for instance, it demanded that certain
inner city areas need to be subjected to a ‘total system of social control’ with policing as
its primary component (cited in: Schofield 2012: 100). It was especially the Broadwater
Farm Estate which became a testing ground for these authoritarian fantasies. In the
months following the riots, large numbers of riot police forces were stationed in
Tottenham, with more than 9,000 officers held on stand-by in mid-October and an average
of 1,000-3,000 officers over the rest of the year (Gifford 1986: 22). According to the
Guardian, the police made 351 arrests between October 1985 and April 1986 (with more
than half of those arrested being released without charge), searched 270 people and
damaged 18 private homes (Guardian 17/04/86). Of those arrested, six were charged with
the murder of Keith Blakelock and in March 1987 Winston Silcott, Engin Raghip and
Mark Braithwaite were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. In November
1991, however, the Court of Appeal ruled that the police investigation entailed crucial
flaws, including the fabrication of evidence, and overruled the conviction in all three
cases. This repressive government and police offensive indicates a definite backlash

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against key elements of the Scarman Inquiry, including the acknowledgement of both
‘racial disadvantage’ and police misconduct as underlying causes of urban unrest.

The analysed news discourse about the unrest was dominated by right-wing
explanatory strategies, accompanied by only a few critical voices in the (left-)liberal press
segment. Looking at the characterisation of the events, all newspaper used strongly
pejorative and emotionally gripping images that conveyed the impression of an almost
unstoppable attack on Britain’s public order. The most common images used in the
immediate coverage were ‘orgy of violence’ (Daily Mail 30/09/85, Daily Mirror
30/09/85a, Times 30/09/85a, Observer 29/09/85), ‘terror’ (Daily Mail 08/10/85a, Daily
Mirror 08/10/85b, Observer 29/09/85) and ‘rampage’ (Daily Mirror 30/09/85a, Times
07/10/85, Guardian 07/10/85), accompanied by others such as ‘hours of madness’ (Daily
Mail 30/09/85, Daily Mirror 30/09/85c), or ‘Britain’s most savage street riot’ (Daily Mail
08/10/85b). The Daily Mail undoubtedly chose the most inflammatory approach, based
on militarising, criminalising and dehumanising portrayals of the rioters as ‘an army of
predominantly black masked youths, some in paramilitary style clothing’ (Daily Mail
08/10/85b), or as ‘rampaging hordes intoxicated with blood lust’ (Daily Mail 09/10/85b)
who ‘have totally divorced themselves from any symbol of authority, who are fearless
because they hunt in packs, who seem to hate white people and who on Broadwater Farm
Estate are the dominant force.’ (Daily Mail 09/10/85a) What is more, the above-discussed
image of “no-go areas” was repeatedly used by all analysed newspapers in order to
visualise the severity of the situation. Here again, it was the tabloid press that deployed
the most forceful affective strategies of mobilising shock, fear, and indignation. The Daily
Mail, for instance, published an article that was subtitled ‘Terror of Tottenham’ (Daily
Mail 08/10/85c) and ‘spectre of the no-go area in England’ (ibid.), and entailed a portrayal
of the Broadwater Farm Estate as a space ‘that isn’t England anymore’ (ibid.), but is
instead ‘more reminiscent of Beirut and Belfast’ (ibid.). Furthermore, it was prophesied
that Broadwater Farm would only be the first example of a growing number of ‘all black
estates where police will enter only at their peril.’ (ibid.) The Daily Mirror claimed that
‘[t]here is evidence that the Broadwater Farm estate was a no-go area for police’ (Daily
Mirror 08/10/85a) and offered as a pseudo-explanation the assumption that ‘the estate had
become a ghetto’ (ibid.) which ‘created a ghetto mentality’ (ibid.). But this image of “no-
go areas” also resonated within the broader news landscape. The Times wrote that ‘many
of the residents of Toxteth, Brixton, Handsworth and St Pauls, among other riot-hit areas,
believe that they already exist.’ (Times 19/11/85) The Observer portrayed the Brixton

172
unrest as a ‘night of terror’ (Observer 29/09/85) during which ‘Brixton Road, the central
spine of the area, rapidly became a “no go” area for police’ (ibid.) The Guardian, too,
contributed to this discourse as well, albeit in a less consistent manner. In one article, for
instance, a Guardian reporter claimed that the Broadwater Farm Estate had for years been
riddled by a culture of ‘petty theft, vandalism and serious crimes by youths on the estate’
which ‘almost’ made it ‘a “no go“ area for the police.’ (Guardian 09/10/85b)

In contrast to the almost obsessive focus on the Brixton and Tottenham unrest 91,
the mainstream media interest in the major protest demonstration in November 1985 was
almost non-existent. The Guardian published two sympathetic articles which amplified
the voices of various organisers and bereaved/affected family members (Guardian
11/11/85, 12/11/85). The Daily Mail provided one short report that summarised the
protest as ‘despite feelings running high […] generally peaceful’, but also evoked fears
about the recurrence of the Tottenham riots (Daily Mail 12/11/85). Neither the Daily
Mirror nor the Times reported on the demonstration. This lack of news coverage can be
interpreted as another indication that the hegemonic public interest was less in the
political causes of these protests, but rather in their potential for disorder.

The overall response of the Labour opposition was more nuanced and context-
sensitive. The Kinnock leadership developed a double strategy of strongly condemning
the riots, in particular the murder of Keith Blakelock, while putting the riots into the
context of social, economic, and political problems associated with the Thatcher
government. At the 1985 Labour Party conference, for instance, the party’s National
Executive Committee issued a motion which interpreted the violence as a result of the
experience of socio-economic deprivation and repressive policing tactics in Britain’s
inner-city areas:

This violence is to be strongly condemned but it would be completely mistaken to

ignore its origins, and the events of recent weeks emphatically underlined the urgent
need for more accountable policing and for policies for inner city regeneration for
which Labour has long campaigned. (cited in Times 01/10/85)

Furthermore, the problem of racist discrimination was acknowledged as a distinct factor

and reform perspectives were demanded in order to ‘overcome the discrimination faced

91
I counted 50 Daily Mail, 40 Daily Mirror, 47 Times and 56 Guardian articles between September 1985
and December 1986.

173
by Black people, especially in employment – and to ensure that the police are properly
accountable to their local communities.’ (cited in Guardian 01/10/85) Overshadowed by
the violent character of the urban protests, however, the Labour leadership’s critique of
police misconduct and racism remained cautious and their recommendations did not go
beyond those proposed by the Scarman Inquiry.

Looking at the broader configuration of political forces operating within the Labour
Party, however, there were also some remarkable responses to the events in Tottenham.
Most notably, Bernie Grant made the unprecedented step to publicly express undivided
solidarity with the protesters at Broadwater Farm. During a public speech organised by
the Broadwater Farm Youth Association, he stated that ‘[t]he reason why the police are
calling for plastic bullets is because the police got a bloody good hiding’ and that ‘[t]here
is no way I am going to condemn the actions of the youth on Sunday night.’ (cited in
Guardian 09/10/85a) In a later speech, he clarified that he did not intend to justify
violence, but instead ‘to articulate the perceptions of those young black people who do
see the police as their enemy.’ (cited in GPIA LRA 01/150). Furthermore, Haringey
Council threatened to suspend the payment of the local police force unless the
Metropolitan Police significantly reduces or entirely abandons the massive police
presence in Tottenham. What is remarkable about these interventions is that Haringey
councillors stepped out of their conventional role as state representatives attempting to
either condemn, downplay or silence political protests, but instead sought to amplify their
viewpoints and demands. 92 As was discussed in section 6.1.3, such a strong critique of
both Metropolitan Police and Conservative government had not come out of thin air, but
was part of a wider attempt by left-wing Labour councils to withstand central government
intervention. More specifically, the threat to defund the police was informed by the
ongoing conflict over local government spending. Grant and others affiliated with the
Labour Party Black Sections had already played an active role within this wider conflict
between local and central government.

Similar to the Tottenham riots themselves, Grant’s statements triggered a wave of

dismissive responses, including from both the Conservative and Labour Party (Guardian
10/10/85; Guardian 11/10/85). Furthermore, it was especially in the tabloid press that
Grant was portrayed in pejorative and discriminatory terms, such as ‘anti-police boss’

92
And it indeed received approval by community organisations such as the Broadwater Farm Defence
Campaign which stated that ‘[w]e have to show our support for the council’s position and make sure they
do not back down or are forced to back down.’ (cited in: IRR BHC 01-04-04-01-14-16)

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(Daily Mail 12/10/85) ‘unwanted Grant’ (Daily Mail 11/12/85), ‘Black demagogue’
(Daily Mail 27/12/85), ‘riot jibe Bernie’ (Daily Mirror 12/10/85), or ‘police-basher
Bernie’ (Daily Mirror 14/10/85b). In an especially inflammatory attack, the Daily Mirror
stated:

Bernie loathes the police and says so: He refuses to condemn the local rioters who
hacked a policeman to death. He endorses the hard left separatist politics of Labour’s
vociferous black members. He is one of the new breed of black racists. […] He owes
his rise to political prominence as a spokesman for the black population crowded
into the dismal concrete wastelands of North London. (ibid.).

This comment brings together all the elements of a right-wing populist racism
characteristic of the Thatcherite period: it makes use of racist victim-perpetrator reversals,
dismisses the necessity of autonomous Black politics, evokes the spectre of left-wing
extremism and inner city “no-go areas”, and contrasts this with an imagination of the
police as the force of public order rather than political division. In other words, it brought
together distinct discourses about Black youth, urban unrest, and left-wing radicalism into
a concentrated image of Britain’s “enemy within”. Confronted with these defamatory
attacks, Haringey council eventually retracted their threats and were thus unable to stop
the police presence on the estate, including the above-mentioned wave of arrests over the
course of the following months. Within the local constituency, however, Grant’s
reputation had not been affected. On the contrary, alongside Paul Boateng, who was the
Groce family lawyer, and Diane Abbott, who co-founded the LPBS campaign, he became
one of the first three Black MPs at the 1987 general election.

Finally, there is one political response by Haringey Council that needs to be

highlighted because it had a direct impact on the ongoing institutional struggles. Given
the Home Office’s refusal to establish a public inquiry into the death of Jarrett as well as
into the broader issue of repressive police and court action against the local community
in Tottenham as well as similar urban areas, Haringey Council established its own inquiry
led by civil rights lawyer Lord Anthony Gifford. Its aim was to investigate the
circumstances of the Tottenham unrest, in particular the ‘social and economic conditions
within the London Borough of Haringey’, ‘the policing of the area before and after the
disturbances’, ‘the racial and other aspects of the relationship between the police and the
residents of the area’, and ‘the role of the relevant statutory and voluntary agencies

175
concerned with policing and community relations’ (Gifford 1986: iii). 93 Similar to the
strategy of the NCMAC to established an independent Fact Finding Commission and
International Committee of Inquiry, Haringey Council made an important attempt to
establish an independent source of knowledge production dedicated to finding out what
had actually happened to Cynthia Jarrett and what the underlying circumstances of the
confrontations between protesters and police forces on the Broadwater Farm Estate had
been. At this point, it is not possible to offer a detailed discussion of the entirety of the
250-page strong report, although some of its findings have already been presented in the
previous sections. It is noteworthy, however, that it made an important contribution to
producing empirical evidence about the everyday reality of police repression and
victimisation on the Broadwater Farm Estate – evidence which largely supported the
critique formulated by organisations such as the Broadwater Farm Youth Association and
the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign. For instance, it commissioned a team of
researchers led by criminologist Jock Young to carry out a survey of local residents on
the issue of police-community relations. This survey concluded that a majority of local
residents experienced or believed that police officers sometimes, often or very often use
threats in order to get answers (65%), falsify statements (60%), use unnecessary arrests
during arrests (65%) or at the station (64%), or plant evidence on people (54%) (cited in
Gifford 1986: 164). Overall, this demonstrates that there were high hopes that an
independent inquiry would be an appropriate institutional terrain to substantiate the
politics of truth which played an important role in the struggles against police repression
and harassment during the mid-1980s.

6.5 Conclusion

The shooting of Cherry Groce and the death of Cynthia Jarrett during police raids on their
homes in Brixton and Tottenham became a catalytic moment in the political conflicts over
racist victimisation, socio-geographical marginalisation, and police misconduct in the
post-1979 period. While there had already been a longer history of Black deaths in police
custody, it was in the context of the cases of Groce and Jarrett that this issue became the
subject of major political confrontations and attracted nation-wide public attention for the
first time in British post-war history. In terms of strengthening and institutionalising racial

93
In 1988, Haringey Council asked Gifford to carry out a second inquiry. Its findings were published in
1989 (Gifford 1989).

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justice and police accountability, however, this confrontational episode remains
ambivalent. Both cases came to symbolise the endemic nature of state repression and
police violence directed against racialised minorities, especially those resident in the
urban centres of post-industrial decline which experienced the full force of the Thatcherite
crisis management. The procedural and ideological selectivities of the judicial
proceedings, the UK government’s refusal to accept the perspectives and
recommendations of the Scarman inquiry, the call for a ‘total system of social control’
(Metropolitan Police), the mistrial of Silcott, Raghip and Braithwaite, the invocation of
anxieties about the loss of Empire within hegemonic public discourses about Black
protesters allegedly turning Britain’s “inner cities” into “no-go areas” – all these examples
indicate that even the slightest institutional reform efforts of the previous years were at
risk in the post-1985 moment. The dominant faction of the Labour Party as well as the
social-democratic and left-liberal segments of the mainstream media discourse were more
critical of both the police raids and the wider problem of police misconduct but stopped
short of highlighting racism as an underlying factor.

Against this background, it is remarkable yet unsurprising that the cases of Groce
and Jarrett immediately turned into confrontational episodes. It is no exaggeration to state
that the violent altercations between protesters and police forces in the aftermath of both
raids became a culmination point in the wider history of urban unrest in post-war British
history. However, equally important were the juridical-political struggles of the bereaved
families as well as organised forms of mobilisation in the following months. Challenging
the tendency in the literature to focus on the spectacular confrontations in Brixton and
Tottenham, I showed that the full political meaning and impact of the Groce and Jarrett
cases can only be grasped if the entire range of responses not only on the streets but also
within inquest and court rooms, local council halls, party meetings, parliamentary
sessions and press conferences are considered. Similar to the New Cross case, the political
campaigns and protest activities were again characterised by a certain convergence
between mobilisational and institutional strategic approaches. Most strikingly, Haringey
Council under the leadership of Grant made the unusual step to express open solidarity
with those involved in militant protest activities and threatened to defund the local police
in order to force the Home Office and Metropolitan Police to end its repressive campaign
in Tottenham. Although this affair was short-lived and unsuccessful, not least because of
the hostile responses from the Labour leadership, it was an important moment where the
struggles against racist violence were amplified rather than excluded from or contained

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within the area of party and state politics. In the next chapter, I will discuss how these
experiences shaped the form, content, and scope of the political struggles of the 1990s
and beyond. This development, as I will try to show, needs to be put in the context of
shifting power relations within the Labour Party and especially the increasing influence
of left-wing, anti-racist politicians which, in turn, had been a response to the Thatcherite
austerity regime and its devastating socio-economic impacts in urban working-class
areas.

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7. The political conflicts over racist violence in the 1990s

In this chapter, I will offer a systematic analysis of the political struggles over the racist
murder of Stephen Lawrence in particular and of the wider politicisation of racist violence
and state racism in the 1990s in general. Similar to the previous three empirical chapters,
this re-examination of the Lawrence case will encompass different analytical levels. Most
notably, I will explore the complexity of the juridical-political struggles that took place
in response to the murder of Lawrence, evaluate their relation to the broader field of
minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist political opposition. Against this background, I will
explore why it was in the particular context of the early 1990s that a racist murder turned
into a historically unprecedented cause célèbre. This will include an examination of the
objective conditions that had made such an exceptional moment possible, but also an
evaluation of the political limitations by which it had been characterised from the
beginning. Finally, I will further substantiate this ‘context-sensitive’ (Reisigl/Wodak
2001: 31; Jessop 2016: 45) analysis by putting it in a broader historical context. Most
notably, I will discuss how the politicisation of the murder of Lawrence had emerged
from and resonated with the previous cycle of political conflicts over racist violence and
state racism analysed in chapters 4, 5 and 6.

A closer look at the existing body of literature on the Lawrence case reveals that
such a research perspective is long overdue. While the Stephen Lawrence case was rarely
mentioned during academic discussions of the early to mid-1990s, it was the publication
of the Macpherson Report in February 1999 which massively increased the number of
academic studies. 94 In addition to immediate commentary, such as various “rapid
responses” to the Sociological Research Online journal (see the introduction by Stanley
1999), the following years also saw more systematic and comprehensive studies dealing
with different aspect of the Lawrence case. Two thematic areas are especially well-
researched: First, the vast majority of existing studies focus on the institutional reform
processes triggered by the Lawrence case. There are now many critical studies on the
strengths and weaknesses of the Macpherson Report itself, in particular its notion of
institutional racism (Bowling/Phillips 2002; Bridges 1999; Lea 2002; Mclaughlin/Murji
1999; Murji 2010; Souhami 2014), but also on its actual impact on subsequent reform
process in the areas of law enforcement, criminal justice and anti-discrimination

94
This pattern of academic attention was quite similar to the overall public debate about the Lawrence case.
For a detailed mapping of the extent of the wider media coverage, see Cottle (2004).

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legislation (Bowling/Phillips 2002; Burnett 2012; Foster et al. 2005; Foster 2008;
Holdaway/O’Neill 2006; Marlow/Loveday 2000; Ray/Smith 2004; Rowe 2007; Rollock
2009; Shiner 2010). Second, there is extensive research on the wider media discourse
about the Lawrence case. This includes studies on the role of mainstream media in the
popularisation and politicisation of the Lawrence case (Cottle 2004; 2005; Law 2002:
116-123; Neal 2003). Furthermore, there are various studies with a more specific thematic
focus, such as on the particular role of the Daily Mail whose relatively sympathetic
coverage of the Lawrence family surprised many commentators and researchers (Cathcart
2017; McLaughlin 2005), or on the gendered media representation of Doreen Lawrence
(Dawney 2013; Holohan 2005; Yuval-Davis 1999). Third, there are various studies of the
broader interplay between racism and anti-racism in the 1990s that touch upon but do not
explicitly focus on the struggles over the Lawrence case (Solomos 2003; Back et al 2002a
and 2002b; Howe 2003; or Hall 2011).

Given this extensive body of literature, however, it is striking that there are still
crucial aspects and perspectives which have received much less attention. More
specifically, I would like to highlight two aspects which are especially relevant to my
own research project. First, there is a lack of academic studies that situate the Lawrence
case within the long-term pattern of political conflicts over violent racism in post-war,
(post-)colonial Britain. In addition to tentative comments in many of the above-mentioned
studies, there are indeed some authors who sought to contextualise and periodise the
Lawrence case. Unfortunately, however, these studies tend to be informed by one-
dimensional explanatory frameworks. More specifically, there are two contrasting
approaches: On the one hand, there are authors who drew a euphoric picture of the
Lawrence case as a fundamental historical turning point. For instance, Cottle interprets
the hegemonic news coverage of the Lawrence case as a ‘moment of social reflexivity
and civil society renewal’ (Cottle 2005: 54) which has revealed Britain’s ‘unspoken
“utopian civil society discourse”’ (ibid.). The decades-long history of media racism,
which, as will be discussed further below, continued to exist in conjunction with the
relatively sympathetic news coverage of the Lawrence family, does not appear within this
evaluation. On the other hand, there is a tendency in the area of critical racism studies to
disregard the wider political significance of the Lawrence case. For instance, Hall
characterises it as just another example of a longstanding history of racist oppression and
anti-racist defeat, as an ‘ancient story’ (Hall 1999: 188) that demonstrates that ‘very little
seems to have changed’ (ibid.) since the 1958 racist riots. Similarly, Gilroy discusses the

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Lawrence case as the latest expression of a longstanding tradition of ‘postcolonial
melancholia’ (Gilroy 2001: 162) which has not essentially changed since the 1960s. There
is indeed one dimension of change which both authors highlight: a gradual process of
multicultural diversification, especially in urban life. However, this process is primarily
located at the (sub-)cultural level. Hall, for instance, talks about a ‘creeping
multiculturalism’ which was the ‘unintended outcome of undirected sociological
processes’ (ibid.). What is discussed less explicitly is if and how this process was
informed by changes in the area of organised politics during the 1980s and 1990s. More
specifically, such a perspective cannot properly explain why it was in the early 1990s that
the decade-long struggle for the establishment and recognition of a public inquiry into
racist violence and state racism was eventually successful (even if its outcome remained
highly limited). Against this background, I want to suggest that a more nuanced analysis
of the shifting political relations of forces as well as their materialisation and condensation
within the areas of state regulation and public discourse is required. This includes an
examination of the changing political debates about and conflicts over racism in the
transition period from Thatcherism to New Labour which, in itself, was mediated by the
enduring significance of socio-economic crisis processes during the early to mid-1990s.

Second, there is only limited research on the political struggles over the Lawrence
case itself. For instance, there is only one comprehensive work on the juridical-political
struggles of the Lawrence family during the 1990s, written by the journalist Brian
Cathcart who reported on the criminal proceedings and public inquiry (Cathcart 2000).
However, its main focus is to provide a detailed reconstruction of these struggles rather
than a systematic evaluation of their conditions, dynamics and repercussions. What is
more, there is barely any research on the wider pattern of political struggles that have
been triggered by the murder of Lawrence, thus giving the false impression that it was a
remarkable yet isolated case. The only exception is a study by Shukra et al. (2004) which
analyses the changing patterns of minority politics which took place after and in response
to the Lawrence case. However, as will be discussed later in this chapter, this contribution
does not cover the full range of activist responses to the Lawrence case. Furthermore, the
Lawrence case itself only appears as a circumstantial factor rather than a key moment in
this process. In this chapter, I will try to demonstrate that the catalytic role of the
Lawrence case can only be fully grasped if the entire repertoire of political responses is
taken into consideration. Based on original archival research, I will examine the Stephen
Lawrence Inquiry as what Poulantzas has called the ‘condensation of a relationship of

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forces’ (Poulantzas 2014: 128), that is, the materialised and institutionalised focal point
of a much wider field of political struggles over racism.

7.1 Context Analysis: The political conflicts over racism in the post-Thatcherite
period

In contemporary debates it is common to characterise the development of British state

policy and organised politics in the final two decades of the 20th century as what Hall
(2011) has called a ‘neoliberal revolution’, that is, the forceful and sustainable resolution
of the political-economic crisis tendencies of the 1970s and 1980s in the form of a
neoliberal re-organisation of economy, politics, and society. What tends to be missing in
such a picture, however, is the fact that the transition period from Thatcherism to Blairism
in the early to mid-1990s was highly fragile insofar as it continued to be overshadowed
by considerable political-economic crisis tendencies. While the annual growth was
characterised by a short phase of stabilisation in the second half of the 1980s, it fell back
into a phase of stagnation and recession at the turn of the decade. The unemployment rate,
too, remained at historically high levels throughout the early to mid-1990s, with rates of
8.9% in 1991, 9.9% in 1992, 10.4% in 1993 and 9.5% in 1994. It was only by the late
1990s that the annual growth re-stabilised at levels between 2.5% and 5% (ONS 2021a)
and the unemployment rate decreased, reaching 5.4% in 2000 (ONS 2021b). These
processes were part of an ongoing restructuring of the capitalist world-economy in the
aftermath of the crisis of Fordism – a process which was facilitated by the British and
other governments who prioritised a neoliberal type of crisis management. Furthermore,
there was a geo-political element to these processes insofar as the recession in 1991 was
directly connected to the oil crisis following the Second Gulf War in which the United
Kingdom was directly involved. The early to mid-1990s thus did not show any signs of a
resolution of those socio-economic problems which had been at the centre of political and
media debates since at least the mid-1970s. Furthermore, the failure of the Thatcher
government to resolve these structural problems as well as its attempt to pass on the social
costs to the lower classes and strata manifested itself in the form of a potential for
dissatisfaction and opposition. While the Thatcher government’s repressive approach to
the 1984-5 miners’ strike and 1986 Wapping dispute was largely successful (Gallas 2015:
164-234), it struggled to suppress and contain the wave of political protest and urban
unrest in response to its plan to introduce a poll tax in 1990, which eventually turned out

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to be a ‘strategic blunder’ (ibid.: 242). In this sense, it can be argued that the transition
period between Thatcherism and Blairism was mediated by the intertwined problem of a
‘crisis of accumulation’ (Solomos 1982: 14) and a ‘crisis of legitimacy’ (ibid.: 19).
Against this background, it is unsurprising that the issues of “crisis” and “recovery”
remained at the centre of policymaking, parliamentary debates, election campaigns, and
media discourses. In the following sections, I will discuss how leading political forces
made sense of and responded to this dual crisis experience. More specifically, I will show
that nationalism and racism continued to play a significant role in order to make this crisis
experience intelligible. Given the relative absence of crisis-analytical perspectives in the
above-mentioned literature, this will require to some extent the examination of primary
sources. Although the terrain of hegemonic politics is indeed more complex, I will put
the main focus on the two leading forces in the British bipartite political system.

7.1.1 Hegemonic politics and media discourse

In the literature on the politics and discourse about “race relations”, national identity,
migration and postcolonialism, the Major government (1990-97) has not attracted much
attention, especially in comparison to both the previous Thatcher (1979-90) and
subsequent New Labour governments (1997-2010). An underlying reason might be that
the Major government was not particularly “Majorite” in the sense that it introduced a
new type of conservative politics different from the previous Thatcherite agenda
(Solomos 2003: 64-68; Gallas 2015: 262-74). However, for my research focus that seeks
to examine the political conflicts over racism and violence in the run-up to the Stephen
Lawrence Inquiry (established in 1997) and Macpherson Report (published in 1999) this
period of governmental politics is of the utmost importance. Thus, I will begin with a
concise outline of conservative politics and discourse in the 1990s. I think the most
precise characterisation of the Major leadership is to regard it as an attempt to resume the
short phase of ‘consolidated Thatcherism’ (Jessop et al. 1988: 64-65) in the late 1980s
before Thatcher’s downfall. On an ideological level, this approach was informed by a
nationalist and traditionalist post-crisis discourse. While the period between the mid-
1970s and mid-1980s had been dominated by warnings about decline and instability, the
late 1980s and early 1990s saw a shift towards cautious promises of recovery and stability
as an imminent possibility, albeit a still unrealised one. As Major put it during a speech
at the 1994 annual party conference: ‘Whisper it gently, but we are now doing well as a

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country. For most people, it isn't their everyday experience, not yet. But it will be […] So
let us have the courage to look forward once again.’ (Major 1994) This ambivalent
relation between acknowledging material hardships on the one hand and promising a
bright future on the other hand was further articulated in strongly nationalist and
traditionalist terms. The route to recovery was not characterised as a complex process of
state regulation and collective bargaining in a transforming capitalist world-economy but
was primarily associated with the collective “fighting spirit” of the “British people”,
imagined as being ‘free of old prejudices and class bafflers’ (Conservative Party 1992).
Emotionally gripping images about collective sacrifice and perseverance belonged to the
standard repertoire of conservative discourse of the early to mid-1990s. To mention but
one example: ‘Over the last three years, the whole country has sweated and slogged and
suffered to turn this economy around. Now, steadily, it’s happening. Recovery is
underway.’ (Major 1993) This nationalist mystification of capitalist crisis tendencies was
accompanied by the occasional invocation of nostalgic attitudes about the loss of Empire,
combined with the reassurance, however, that this shameful moment has passed ‘because
economically and militarily Britain remains in the top league’ (Major 1994). However,
given that these myths of collective strength and harmony were put into question by the
continued existence of socio-economic inequality, strategies of ideological displacement
became necessary. Here again, the most important strategy was to imagine various
“enemy groups” who were accused of threatening the nationalist spirit that was supposed
to underpin the neoliberal crisis management. Such a Thatcherite construction of a ‘Great
Divide - Us versus Them’ (Major 1995) included the antagonisation of the ‘defeatists’
(Major 1991) from the opposition benches, but also ‘the destructive dictatorship of union
militants’ (Major 1991), ‘the welfare cheats’ who ‘deprive those in real need’ (Major
1996), or the ‘young thugs’ attacking ‘old people’ (Major 1992).

How did this post-crisis discourse inform the Conservative politics and broader
right-wing discourse of “race” and racism in the 1990s? I would like to highlight various
tendencies which are especially relevant for the issue of racist violence. Most importantly,
the self-congratulatory discourse about renewal and stability was also extended to the area
of “race relations”. Many leading Conservative politicians were eager to portray the
Thatcher period as the beginning of a post-racial utopia beneficial to both the “white” and
“non-white” population. For instance, Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke claimed in a
parliamentary debate that ‘whatever problems may face the ethnic minorities, it is not true
that they receive less than their fair share of national resources.’ (HC Deb 09/06/92: 159)

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An important element in this narrative was to re-imagine the relative growth of an Asian
and, to a lesser extent, Black middle class which took place since the late 1970s as a key
achievement of Thatcherite policies (see for example Clarke’s speech in HC Deb
09/06/92). 95 At the same time, however, there was still a need within the conservative
hegemony project to offer a personalised, essentialist and spatialised pseudo-explanation
of the enduring force of political-economic crisis tendencies. Against this background,
the continued over-representation of Black and Asian people among working-class
communities and the urban poor was projected upon themselves. For this problem was
interpreted as the result of an inherent lack of merit and ambition as well as an affinity
for delinquency, crime, and disorder (rather than as the result of a class-specific type of
neo-racism which, as was discussed in the previous chapter, had been openly embraced
by the Thatcherites since the early 1980s). Most notably, racialised discourses about “the
inner city” continued to be a prevalent ideological strategy, although its role had slightly
changed since the mid-1980s. This can be exemplified by taking a closer look at the “no-
go area” discourse in the early 1990s. On the one hand, the image of “no-go areas” still
figured prominently in right-wing political discourse. In a parliamentary speech in May
1992, for instance, Michael Howard, Secretary of State for the Environment, proclaimed
that ‘[t]here can be no forgotten few—nor can there be any exclusion zone in our inner
cities or on any of our housing estates; no no-go areas where the writ of opportunity does
not run.’ (HC Deb 12/05/92: 507). He thereby contributed to an ongoing public discussion
about the alleged existence of numerous “no-go areas” throughout “mainland” Britain. At
its centre of attention were various incidents of small-scale urban unrest in Manchester,
Leeds, Newcastle, and Oxford that were associated with the activities of “youth gangs”
involved in car theft and “joyriding”. 96 On the other hand, there was a growing number
of prominent voices that considered the “no-go area” image exaggerated. For instance,
Peter Lloyd, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department,
responded to the suggestion ‘that all our towns and cities up and down the country are
rendered no-go areas on Friday and Saturday nights by young people’ by stating that
‘[t]here are problems, but to exaggerate them in that manner does not help to solve them.’
(HC Deb 18/10/91: 608). Similarly, the Daily Mail, which had played a leading role in

95
Virdee argues that ‘it was political action, in particular anti-racist activism, forged around a racialised
“black” identity, that first opened up such work to large numbers of minority workers.’ (Virdee 2006: 625)
96
See for example Daily Mail (03/09/91, 12/09/91, 09/01/93) and Times (24/05/91, 04/09/91, 14/09/91). –
To a lesser extent, this image was also reproduced within the social-democratic and left-liberal segments
of the mainstream news discourse. See for example Daily Mirror (03/09/91, 04/09/91), Guardian (13/09/91,
09/01/93) and Observer (15/09/91).

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the “no-go area” discourse of the early to mid-1980s, began to draw a more ambivalent
picture: While most authors continued to reproduce that image, there were also some who
considered the assumption that “no-go areas” regularly appear throughout Britain
exaggerated (Daily Mail 11/05/91; 09/01/93). Another development of the 1990s was that
the racialised connotations of the “no-go area” image became less distinctive. Most
notably, large parts of the news coverage of the confrontations between youths and police
forces in Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, and Oxford did not raise the issue of “race”,
instead interpreting and condemning these events as symbols of a more general
pathological working-class culture. Given the strong racialisation of the term in the
previous years, however, it is unsurprising that there were still various attempts to bring
in the theme of “race”. For instance, the Daily Mail suggested that the events in Leeds
exemplified ‘[t]he dilemma of tackling crime in racially sensitive areas’ (Daily Mail
30/07/91). The Times claimed that the main cause of the events in Leeds were violent
conflicts within racialised minority communities: ‘There were clear signs in the previous
two weeks […] that tension was building up in Chapeltown. The underlying hostility
between some blacks and Asians had worsened after several robberies on Asian women
and a fight in a Kashmiri restaurant.’ (Times 03/08/91). There were also various attempts
to establish direct links between the image of “no-go areas” and “black crime”. For
instance, the Daily Mail published a lengthy article about the prosecution of Michael
Showers, a black man charged with drug trafficking in the Toxteth area of Liverpool
(Daily Mail 07/11/91). This article provided a conspiratorial portray of ‘the Godfather of
Toxteth’ (ibid.) who ‘had seemed untouchable since the Toxteth riots ten years ago’
(ibid.) and had allegedly been upholding close ties with local Labour politicians:
‘Showers and his friends found a ready audience among Left-wing Labour members of
the local police authority – forcing such a softly-softly policy on the chief constable that
parts of Toxteth became virtual no-go areas where drug dealers could trade unhindered.‘
(ibid.). In an article on Manchester’s Moss Side, the Times portrayed the area as ‘a
deprived area south of the city centre’ (Times 29/06/93) riddled by ‘the battle between
two gangs of black drug dealers and their acolytes’ (ibid.). The Metropolitan Police, too,
contributed to such a discourse about the alleged threat of “black crime”. Most significant
was Police Commissioner Paul Condon’s statement in June 1995 that ‘[i]t is a fact that
very many of the perpetrators of mugging are very young black people, who have been
excluded from school or/and are unemployed’ (cited in Times 08/07/95) – a statement
which was criticised by both community and anti-racist organisations as well as the

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Commission for Racial Equality (ibid.; CARF 08+09/95) Such an ongoing discourse
about “black crime” in the “inner city” also had practical implications. For instance, there
were reports of large-scale, drug-related police raids that led to accusations of police
racism in Wolverhampton in May 1989 (Guardian 24/05/89) and on the Broadwater Farm
Estate in September 1989 (Guardian 30/09/89).

It was also at the turn of the decade that a broader range of racist enemy
constructions entered the stage of right-wing political discourse. In the wake of the
Rushdie Affar and the Second Gulf War, for instance, minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist
organisations pointed to the growing role of anti-Muslim racism, targeting both
communities of Middle Eastern descent as well as those of South Asian descent who in
previous decades had primarily been racialised in terms of “colour” or “origin” (see for
example CARF 02+03/91, 04+05/91, 07+08/91; Searchlight 09/89; 03/90; see also
Richardson 2009; Solomos 2003: 212-15). Furthermore, there were also reports of
growing hostility in mainstream and official political discourse to Roma and Traveller
communities. It was in the early 1990s, for instance, that the “no-go area” image was also
used in order to demonise and criminalise these communities (see for example Daily Mail
03/05/93; Times 27/05/92; HC Deb 05/02/93; see also Searchlight 12/91b; 02/92; Turner
2002). Furthermore, the Conservative Party stated in their 1992 general election
manifesto that ‘[i]llegal camping by gypsies or other travellers can affect the lives of
whole communities. We believe that this problem must be tackled.’ (Conservative Party
1992). Another development of the early 1990s was that the Conservative government
took a leading role in a hostile and restrictive discourse about “asylum seekers” which
was directly connected to and justified in terms of alleged concerns about “racial
harmony”. 97 In this sense, the issue of asylum became another occasion to continue the
longstanding ‘dual interventionist strategy’ (Solomos 2003: 76) of introducing strict
immigration controls as an alleged precondition for “good race relations”.

Finally, this racialised post-crisis discourse was underpinned by the tendency to

downplay and trivialise racist discrimination and violence as an incidental problem that
was already tackled efficiently by police and judiciary. While ‘the evil of racial attacks’
(Home Secretary Baker, HC Deb 18/10/91: 541) was condemned, racist violence was
recognised neither as an endemic problem nor as one that is dealt with insufficiently.

97
See for example the contributions of leading Conservative politicians to the parliamentary debates on
asylum in July 1991 (HC Deb 02/07/91).

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Against this background, the late 1980s and early 1990s saw only minor new initiatives
to tackle racist violence, such as the implementation of an interdepartmental “racial
attacks group” in 1987 which, however, was only convened three times during the
following eight years (HC Deb 20/04/95). 98 What is more, the true danger for “race
relations” was attributed to those who continue to make such allegations of racism. As
Clarke put it: ‘As everyone with experience of inner cities or race relations policy knows,
some organisations in the field […] simply accuse all critics of racialism when the
organisation's incompetence, discourtesy and refusal to provide agreements is pointed
out.’ (ibid.) Such a denunciation of anti-racist political organisations also had practical
consequences. At the turn of the decade, for instance, there were reports that the
Metropolitan Police repeatedly targeted the work of the Southall Monitoring Group,
which since its foundation in the early 1980s played a significant role in the support of
various family justice campaigns, including the Stephen Lawrence Family Campaign (HC
EDM 13/12/89; Searchlight 10/90b).

The electoral success of the Labour Party under the leadership of Blair in 1997 was
a significant yet contradictory moment in the trajectory of political struggles over racism
in the run-up to the Macpherson report. Compared to the Major government, the Labour
party under Blair has received considerably more attention in the area of critical migration
and racism studies (see for example Back et al. 2002a, 2002b; Hall 1999; Gilroy 2001,
2004; Mulvey 2011). However, there are certain limitations in the literature which require
some critical discussion. Most notably, there is a lack of attention to the contradictory
nature of the New Labour project which is especially important in order to understand its
particular stance on “race relations” and racism. Furthermore, there is a tendency to
exclusively focus on the New Labour leadership without taking into account the shifting
relations of forces within the wider party which had accompanied its path to governmental
power. It is those two aspects which I will emphasise in the following remarks.

The overall political-ideological of the New Labour faction was to move further in
the direction of a political centre which, following one and a half decades of Thatcherite
dominance, had been significantly pushed to the right (see Back et al. 2002a: 3.1). This

98
Within the wider party, there was indeed a small number of centrist politicians, such as Peter Bottomley
or John Marshall, who raised the issue of racist discrimination and violence more consistently (see for
example HC Deb 17/12/90: 20; 18/03/91: 13-14; 20/01/92: 11-12; 18/03/96: 16). However, these positions
remained marginal and never went as far as to criticise insufficient government, police, and judicial
responses.

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was articulated through the “Third Way” approach that sought to portray the Labour Party
as a new ‘people’s party’ (Blair 1994) that ‘will change traditional dividing lines between
right and left’ (ibid.). It was underpinned by a nationalist post-crisis discourse not unlike
the conservative variant discussed in the previous section. While the persistence of socio-
economic crisis tendencies was to some degree acknowledged, the main emphasis was on
‘[t]he vision […] of national renewal, a country with drive, purpose and energy.’ (Blair
1997) In order to achieve this vision, it was suggested, Britain needs to be ‘a nation with
pride in itself’ (Blair 1994), transcending the ‘bitter political struggles of left and right’
as well as the cleavages between ‘public versus private, bosses versus workers, middle
class versus working class’ (Blair 1997). In contrast to the Conservative Party, however,
the role of post-imperial nostalgia was more ambivalent. Blair’s public speeches, for
instance, oscillated between rejecting the notion of ‘resting on past glories’ (Blair 1995),
and promising a ‘vision for post-Empire Britain’ that built on ‘the strengths of our history’
(Blair 1997) Similarly, the processes of social problematisation and enemy construction
played an important role, but were less forceful. This can be exemplified by looking at
New Labour’s law-and-order approach which was characterised by the dual strategy of
being ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ (Blair 1995). Thus, although crime
was to a certain extent construed as a social rather than individual phenomenon,
repressive action against criminal offenders was nonetheless a key ingredient. For
instance, Blair proudly announced ‘that new Labour has taken the mantle of the party of
law and order in Britain today’ and promised ‘to crack down on violent crime, drug
pushers, anti-social neighbours, hooligans’ (Blair 1996).

These ambivalences of the “Third Way” approach also shaped the Labour
leadership’s ideological and strategic approach to “race relations”. There has been
extensive discussion around New Labour’s role in the dissemination of racist narratives
(and later the implementation of corresponding policies) in the areas of “immigration”
and “asylum”, “crime” and “inner city”. This has led some authors to suggest that the
New Labour approach verged on being identical with the conservative right (Gilroy 2001:
152; Fekete 2001). It is indeed correct to suggest that in terms of its immigration and law-
and-order policies New Labour was hardly distinguishable from its Conservative
competitor. For instance, while New Labour politicians raised concern about the extent
to which the Major government sought to dismantle the right of asylum, they nonetheless
agreed with its restrictive stance, and explicitly invoked anxieties about Britain’s “racial
harmony” in order to justify such a stance. In the mid-1990s, for instance, then Shadow

189
Home Secretary Jack Straw stated that ‘Britain must honour its own history and retain an
asylum system that is just and humane’ but added that ‘people must not be led to believe
that immigration is out of control. If that happens, racial tension will rise, and the whole
country will be the loser.’ (HC Deb 11/12/95: 711). According to Searchlight Magazine,
there were also a number of Labour councillors who explicitly contributed to the
demonisation and criminalisation of Roma and Traveller communities (see Searchlight
11/91, 05/92; see also Turner 2002). 99 Furthermore, it was during the first Blair
government that the Metropolitan Police established the armed special force “Operation
Trident” which was tasked to tackle gun crimes based on the assumption that, as was
stated on its official website, ‘the majority of which are perpetrated by black criminals on
members of the black communities.’ (cited in Murji 2002: 32). 100 But there were also key
differences between New Labour and Conservatism which need to be highlighted in order
to make sense of the Labour Party’s ambivalent role in the political debates about racist
violence. Most notably, there was a stronger acknowledgement of notions of racial
equality, diversity, and anti-discrimination. In the 1997 Party Manifesto, for instance, it
was promised to strengthen the existing anti-discriminatory legislation codified in the
1976 Race Relations Act by creating ‘a new offence of racial harassment and a new crime
of racially motivated violence to protect ethnic minorities from intimidation.’ (Labour
Party 1997) Furthermore, the Blair leadership at least promised to increase the
representation of politicians from racialised minority communities. This is where the
differences between the social-democratic and conservative post-crisis discourse was
most profound: While the latter openly discredited anti-discrimination as an obstacle or
danger to the nationalist and traditionalist common sense required for its neoliberal crisis
management, the latter more openly embraced it as a key element of a ‘new Britain’ (Blair
1995) emerging from decades of crisis and instability. Thus, looking at the New Labour
project in its entirety, it represented a deeply contradictory combination of both racism
and anti-racism. As Back et al. put it, ‘[o]n the issue of the politics of race and racism the
Blair government is a political formation riven with incommensurable commitments and
aspirations.’ (2002a: 5.7) Back et al. further suggest that this political agenda can be
characterised as the revival of the assimilationist politics of 1960s Labourism (ibid.: 2.2).
However, this comparison is only partially convincing: On the one hand, it was indeed in

99
These tendencies within the Labour Party were tackled by the Labour Campaign for Travellers’ Rights
(Searchlight 05/92).
100
Operation Trident attracted widespread public attention in August 2011 when officers of that special
force killed the young Black man Mark Duggan.

190
this period that Labour had begun to promote the notion that “good race relations” require
a limitation of “New Commonwealth immigration” (see chapter 4). On the other hand,
however, previous Labour leaderships were much more reluctant to take into account the
demands of minority and anti-racist voices from both inside and outside the party. It can
even be argued that this was still the primary stance of the previous Kinnock leadership
until the late 1980s (see chapter 6). Against this background, I consider it more useful to
characterise the New Labour project as a more direct response to internal party conflicts
in the previous decade of socio-economic crisis and political polarisation. Its key strategy,
I want to suggest, was to adapt to the neoliberal, law-and-order agenda of the previous
Thatcher government, while also taking up some elements of the diversity and equality
politics of the Labour left which had gained more influence through the channels of local
government and parliamentary politics in the previous decade.

This, then, also raises the question of the wider setting of relations of forces in the
party. Indeed, it was not the New Labour leadership that took the lead in parliamentary
debates and initiatives to strengthen the fight against racist discrimination and violence.
A much more consistent strategy was developed by a diverse faction of largely left-wing
MPs who had played an important role in making the Labour Party a key terrain of
‘transitional public sphere’ politics (Shukra et al. 2004). These included the four first
Black and Asian MPs Diane Abbott, Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng and Keith Vaz as well
as various Jewish MPs such as Mildred Gordon and David Winnick. Most of these MPs
entered the parliamentary stage between 1983 and 1992 and had previously been involved
in local politics or community activism. Organised in various party organisations such as
the Socialist Campaign Group, Labour Party Black Sections and Poale Zion, these MPs
played the most important role in shifting the parliamentary attention and thus preparing
legislative initiatives to tackle racist discrimination and violence (see for example HC
Deb 20/02/91: 327-41; 09/12/92: 850-52; 21/05/93: 541-52; 11/03/94: 586-89). 101 It was
also these MPs who sought to overcome the long tradition of social-democratic thinking
in terms of “racial disadvantage” and “racial tension” and instead suggested to understand
racism as a form of political oppression. For instance, it was politicians such as Diane
Abbott and John Austin-Walker who attempted to rehabilitate the concept of institutional
racism in the early 1990s after it had been dismissed by the Scarman Inquiry (see for
example HC Deb 14/05/92: 801; 09/06/92: 172, 190). Furthermore, these MPs developed

101
There was also a small number of Liberal-Democratic MPs such as Simon Hughes and Elizabeth Lynne
who contributed to such parliamentary initiatives (HC Deb 02/02/89: 420; 08/05/90: 13; 20/03/95: 13).

191
more complex crisis construals informed by what I would call a critical-materialist
explanatory approach. As was discussed in chapter 2, such an approach takes into account
the dialectical relation between the material conditions and political manifestations of
racism. More precisely, racism was understood as a type of ideological displacement that
alluded to the material hardships and grievances emerging from the structural problems
of contemporary capitalism and its neoliberal type of crisis management. What is more,
there was an awareness of the power of racist ideology to materialise itself and further
compound the precarious living conditions of those affected by it. This led to a picture of
the multi-racialised working-class “inner city” as a symbol of the particular crisis
experience of Black and Asian communities. As Bernie Grant put it in a parliamentary
speech in the early 1990s:

The Government's policy appeases racists, but, unfortunately, racists are only
appeased for a short period, and are now on the move. Unemployment has caused
more racial attacks on black and minority ethnic groups than any other issue. Racists
use unemployment and other such excuses. I urge the Government to come up with
positive policies to deal with the problem. (HC Deb 09/06/92: 180-81) 102

There was also a number of left-liberal and social-democratic journalists that made
similar attempts to give an expression to the deep-seated crisis experience of British Black
and Asian communities. For instance, various authors attempted to subvert the “no-go
area” image by associating it with the problem of racism. In a Daily Mirror article on
racist violence in various British inner-city areas, for instance, the author stated that
‘[s]ome estates in Oldham are said to have become “no-go areas” for Asians and blacks.’
(Daily Mirror 02/01/90). Similarly, Edward Pilkington warned in a Guardian comment
on the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Bill that with the implementation of this piece
of legislation ‘the country will become one step nearer a no-go area for non-British
blacks.’ (Guardian 11/01/93).

102
The relationship of this faction to the leadership remained complex throughout the 1990s and early
2000s. While some politicians remained sceptical and critical about New Labour (see Solomos 2003: 90),
others seised the opportunity to take on governmental roles, such Paul Boateng who held various ministerial
positions after 1997, or Keith Vaz who was Minister of State for Europe between 1999 and 2001. This
process of mainstreaming anti-racism did not come without its costs. Boateng, for instance, who was the
lawyer of Cynthia Jarrett’s family in the mid-1980s, began to advocate strong law-and-order positions in in
the late 1990s. According to Gilroy, for instance, he stated that ‘[s]top and search is there to be used as part
of the police’s armoury. We expect the police to use it. There’s no softly, softly policy there’s no hands-off
policy.’ (cited in Gilroy 2001: 160)

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7.1.2 Far-right oppositional politics

The failed electoral approach of the National Front (NF) led to another phase of break-
ups and re-groupings within the neo-fascist political milieu. While the NF increasingly
disappeared in political irrelevance, the British National Party (BNP), which was formed
in 1982, established itself as the main organisational centre of British neo-fascism.
Similar to the NF, its ideological approach was based on a ‘toxic combination of
biological racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia’ (Goodwin 2011: 40) as well as
‘hostility toward the liberal parliamentary system’ (ibid.). Furthermore, the BNP pursued
a clear territorial strategy which, as was discussed in the previous chapters, had been a
consistent feature of neo-fascist mobilisation since at least the 1958 racist riots in Notting
Hill (ibid.: 46-48). Its primary goal was to generate popular support among white
residents and create an atmosphere of fear and terror for Black and Asian residents in
those urban working-class areas that were at the centre of racialised “inner city”
discourses. At the turn of the decade, for instance, it carried out a so-called “Rights for
Whites” leaflet campaign and rallied against the construction of a mosque in London’s
East End (Searchlight 04/90: 10-11; Guardian 12/02/94). This led to some electoral
successes: According to Copsey, the BNP was able to secure the votes of around one
quarter of the white electorate in Tower Hamlets during the local elections in 1990
(Copsey 2000: 165) and managed to win one council seat in 1993 (ibid.: 166). Most
important for this chapter is that south-east London, too, became a key target of BNP
activities. In 1989, the BNP decided to move its headquarters to a book shop in Welling,
close to the locations where Rolan Adams, Rohit Duggal and Stephen Lawrence were
murdered in the early 1990s (see section 7.2.1) Overall, the mainstream influence of the
BNP remained limited throughout the 1990s (Goodwin 2011: 36-54). However, it
successfully took over the NF’s role as one of the key driving forces of inciting and
perpetrating racist violence – in particular in urban working-class areas.

7.1.3 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional politics

Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional actors struggled to make sense of the
broader developments in the area of hegemonic politics and discourse. While there was
an overarching impression that new answers needed to be found in order to respond to
the experiences – and especially the failures – of the 1980s, there was significant
disagreement about the problems to be faced, the aims to be achieved and the strategies

193
to be chosen. This resulted in at least three lines of conflict. First, the longstanding conflict
between integrationist and autonomous strategic approaches was still alive, not least of
all because many actors who had been involved in such debates and controversies over
the past decades were still active in the 1990s. Second, these strategic debates were also
informed by conflicting notions of identity politics. A particularly important development
was the growing influence of various actors who put a strong emphasis on black
autonomy and remained sceptical about the involvement of white leftists in anti-racist
and anti-fascist campaigning. The most important example is the Anti-Racist Alliance
(1991), a black-led alliance which emerged from the experiences of the Labour Party
Black Sections and whose approach was supported by a wide range of mainstream
political actors, including many Labour MPs and leading trade unionists (Shukra 1998:
90-93; Shukra et al. 2004: 36; Copsey 2000: 167-68). Other actors such as Searchlight
Magazine, Anti-Fascist Action, and the Anti-Nazi League, which was relaunched in 1992,
asserted that such an approach is informed by an essentialist and separatist notion of “race
relations” that tends to foreclose the possibility of broader anti-racist and anti-fascist
campaigns (Searchlight 06/93; Copsey 2000: 168-70). This, in turn, led to counter-
accusations of white left-wing paternalism by the Anti-Racist-Alliance (Copsey 2000:
171). Third, the late 1980s and early 1990s saw the emergence of growing controversies
about the relationship between racism, fascism, and antisemitism. Similar to previous
discussions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, these controversies emerged from
difficulties in negotiating the relationship between anti-racist and anti-fascist
perspectives, but also from conflicting interpretations of geo-political issues, in particular
the ongoing Israel/Palestine conflict and the Second Gulf War. One example that
illustrates the significance of this line of conflict is the discontinuation of a decade-long
cooperation between Searchlight Magazine and the Campaign against Racism and
Fascism in 1990. Both organisations accused each other of downplaying either racism
(see CARF 02+03/91) or antisemitism (see Searchlight 12/91a).

At the same time, however, there were various attempts to overcome (or at least put
aside) some of these lines of conflict. Most important in this context were two different
attempts to establish large-scale, nation-wide public campaigns. On the one hand, there
were those who interpreted the growing responsiveness of various actors located within
the social-democratic hegemony project as an unprecedented window of opportunity in
order to strengthen and amplify minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist positions. Following
Shukra et al. (2004), a various organisations emerged in the early 1990s that attempted to

194
establish a ‘transitional public sphere’ (ibid.: 33, emphasis in original) that bridges the
gap between minority activism and mainstream politics, focusing in particular on the
organisation of professionalised, high-impact campaigns. In addition to ARA, they also
discuss the examples of National Black Caucus (1986), the 1990 Trust (1990), Operation
Black Vote (1990), the National Black Alliance (1994), the National Assembly Against
Racism (1995), and the National Civil Rights Movement (1999). On the other hand, there
were those who remained more sceptical about the potential of mainstream campaigning
and institutional reform, in particular following the devastating experiences of state
repression following the confrontations over racism and violence in the early to mid-
1980s. These actors indeed saw the necessity to defend minority rights in the public
sphere as well as institutional settings. But they maintained that real social and political
change can only be initiated by oppositional movements operating outside of the
institutional framework of the state. In the early 1990s, for instance, Anti-Fascist Action
organised various “Unity Carnivals” in East London and Newcastle which, according to
reports by Searchlight Magazine, attracted around 10,000 people in 1991 and 1993
(Searchlight 10/91, 07/93). In May 1994, the Anti-Nazi League organised another anti-
fascist carnival in South London which, according to the organisers, was attended by more
than 100,000 people (Observer 29/05/94). Another important developed in the late 1990s
was the establishment of the United Families and Friends Campaign in 1997, the first
nation-wide coalition of families affected by deaths in state custody. According to its
website, the campaign was initially established ‘as a network of black families’, but ‘over
recent years the group has expanded and now includes the families and friends of people
from varied ethnic and cultural backgrounds.’ (UFFC n.d.; see also Fero 2015). In the
following case study, I will analyse how the political struggles in the aftermath of the
Stephen Lawrence were situated within these broader dynamics of minority, anti-racist
and anti-fascist political action.

7.2 Case study: The political conflicts over the case of Stephen Lawrence in
Eltham, 1993-1999

Having delineated the main contours of the wider social and political developments which
had influenced the political debates and conflicts over racism and violence in the early
1990s, it is now possible to develop a more systematic re-examination of the Lawrence
case. Given the research gaps discussed at the beginning of this chapter, I will put the

195
main emphasis on the political developments and conflicts that took place in the aftermath
of the racist murder of Lawrence in April 1993 and in the run-up to the publication of the
Macpherson Report in February 1999. While there are many studies of the Macpherson
Report itself as well as its impact on subsequent institutional reform efforts and socio-
political developments, it is striking that the plethora of social, political, and juridical
struggles by which this path to the Macpherson Report was accompanied and mediated
has not been examined systematically. What is more, there have so far only been
rudimentary attempts to put the Lawrence case in the context of the decade-long pre-
history of political struggles over (violent) racism. Both these aspects will be at the centre
of the following case study.

7.2.1 The racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in the wider context of racist
violence in the early 1990s

Unlike many other racist murder cases in the British post-war history, the racist murder
of 18-year-old Black student Stephen Lawrence is well-documented and well-known. On
the evening of 22 April 1993, Lawrence was racially abused and stabbed to death by a
group of at least 5-6 white youths while he was waiting at a bus stop in Well Hall Road
in Eltham, south-east London. He was with his friend, 18-year-old Black student
Duwayne Brooks, who managed to escape the murderous attack and immediately called
an ambulance. It arrived twelve minutes after Brooks made his first call (Macpherson
1999: 10.22) but on its arrival Lawrence had already died and attempts to resuscitate him
en route to the hospital failed (ibid.: 10.44-10.45). Several people, including an off-duty
police officer, were present during or immediately after the attack. The first police
officers, too, arrived immediately after the murder, even before the ambulance (ibid.:
5.10).

The murder did not occur in isolation but was part of a wider climate of racist
violence. There is evidence to suggest that the problem of violent racism remained at a
high level throughout the 1990s. Looking at reports from anti-racist and anti-fascist
research and monitoring organisations, there was a consistent pattern of racist and far-
right violence, including incidents of severe injury and murder as well as bomb and arson
attacks. 103 A particular development that has been reported by activists and journalists is

103
See for example Searchlight (10/90a; 06/92; 04/93) and CARF (11+12/92; 03+04/93).

196
the growing number of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim attacks in the wake of the “Rushdie
Affair” and the Second Gulf War, including 20 arson attacks on mosques until April 1991
(see Searchlight 03/91, 11/91, CARF 02+03/91; 04+05/91; Guardian 18/07/89, 27/04/91).
Following Athwal (2002b) and Bowling (1998: 58-62, 102-4), the number of confirmed
or suspected racist murder incidents doubled from 21 (with 37 victims) between 1980-89
to 42 incidents (with 42 victims) between 1990-99. Home Office statistics indicated a
similar development: The number of ‘racial incidents’ increased from 4,383 in 1988 to
12,199 in 1996 (cited in TNA NT 1/79). Furthermore, the number of contentious Black
deaths in state custody increased from 57 to 68 in the same period (Athwal 2002a). 104
Retrospective figures also revealed that five of those six deaths in custody which since
1980 returned an inquest verdict of “unlawful killing” related to Black men, namely
Oliver Pryce (1990), Leon Patterson (1992), Shiji Lapite (1994), Ibrahima Sey (1996) and
Christopher Alder (1998) (cited in Times 25/08/00). Many of those cases, however, did
not remain unchallenged. This can be illustrated by looking at the practice of establishing
family justice campaigns which, as was discussed in the previous chapter, had been a
consistent feature of minority responses to racist violence since at least the early 1980s.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, this approach became more widespread. Those campaigns
that preceded the Lawrence case include the Sekhon Family Support Group (1988/9), the
Tahir Akram Memorial Committee (1990), the Tasleem Akhtar Memorial Committee
(1990), the Justice for the Pryces Support Committee (1990), the Rolan Adams Family
Campaign (1991), the Rohit Duggal Family Campaign (1992), the Mohammed Sarwar
Memorial Committee (1992), the Siddik Dada Memorial Committee (1992), and the Joy
Gardner Memorial Campaign (1993). 105

While reports of racist attacks came from all parts of the UK, certain urban areas
such as south-east London continued to be especially affected. In the three years prior to
the murder of Lawrence, there had been at least three other racist murder cases in the
same area: In February 1991, Rolan Adams, 15-year-old Black pupil, was stabbed to
death by ‘a gang of about 15 white youths’ (Observer 16/05/93). Only one youth was
convicted for murder, while three other youths were convicted for violent disorder (ibid.).

104
Athwal uses an extended notion of Blackness in this documentation of incidents. Among the victims are
individuals of Afro-Caribbean, South Asian, East Asian, and Middle Eastern descent.
105
See AIURRRC GB3228.8/7/1; GPIA EAC/04/02/07/01; IRR BHC 01/04/04/01/10/01/04;
01/04/04/01/10/07; 01/04/04/01/10/08; 01/04/04/01/12/048.

197
In May 1991, Orville Blair, a 25-year-old Black man, was stabbed to death by a white
man who was later ‘convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of provocation’
(Macpherson 1999: 7.18). In July 1992, Rohit Duggal, a 16-year-old Asian schoolboy,
was murdered by a group of white youths of which only one perpetrator was convicted
for murder (Guardian 24/02/93). 106 There had also been a longer trajectory of racist
violence in south-east London since at least the previously analysed New Cross case one
decade earlier (see chapter 6). According to reports by the monitoring group Greenwich
Action Committee against Racial Attacks (GACARA), which had been formed in 1978,
there was an average of 300-400 reports of racist incidents between 1991 and 1993 (cited
in Macpherson 1999: 35.6) and an increase of such incidents by 140% between 1989 and
1993 (cited in Observer 16/05/93). Anti-racist and anti-fascist groups also highlighted
that this increase coincided with the opening of the national headquarters of the BNP in
the Welling area, which, as noted above, was only three miles away from the location
where Lawrence was murdered. According to Searchlight Magazine, there had already
been a clear pattern of racist attacks and street provocations by BNP members and
supporters in south-east London in the early 1990s (Searchlight 10/92; 12/92). This
suggests that the BNP pursued a territorial strategy of creating terror and inciting hatred
among racialised minority communities in this residential area – a strategy which, as
discussed in the previous chapters, had been a consistent feature of neo-fascist
mobilisation since at least the 1958 racist riots in Notting Hill. The group of white youths
who in the following weeks were suspected of murdering Lawrence can be characterised
as an embodiment of this subculture of both every day and organised racist violence: They
had a reputation of perpetrating racist attacks in the area, including suspicions of
connections to the Adams and Duggal murders (Macpherson 1999: 7.12, 7.15-7.22).
Furthermore, Searchlight Magazine suggested that three of the five identified suspects
‘may have stronger links with local Nazi activists’ (Searchlight 10/98: 2). Thus, for those
who had been affected by or attentive to this toxic climate of racist violence and neo-
fascist mobilisation in south-east London, the racist murder of Lawrence did not come as
a surprise.

106
While only the murder of Rolan Adams was at that time not officially classified as racially motivated,
all three murders were later listed as racist incidents in the Macpherson report (1999: 7.18-7.20).

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7.2.2 Police investigation

The police response to the Lawrence murder was characterised by a consistent pattern of
denial, indifference, incompetence as well as racist stereotyping. Given that this police
response has been put under close scrutiny in the following years, it is not necessary to
provide a detailed recapitulation. I will instead restrict myself to a concise evaluation
based on Bowling’s stage model of police responses to racist incidents (see chapter 3).
Regarding the first stage (the initial input into the police system), Brooks raised questions
as to why the police arrived before the ambulance (Macpherson 1999: ch. 7). During the
second stage (the arrival and presence of a mobile unit at the crime scene), the dispatched
police officers failed to offer first aid to Lawrence and showed insensitive and hostile
behaviour towards Brooks (ibid.: ch. 10). The third stage of the criminal investigation
turned out to be a lengthy endeavour that consisted of two phases between April 1993 and
May 1994 as well as an internal review in late 1993 following the failure of the first phase.
It was especially the first phase which was characterised by severe insufficiencies,
including flawed and misdirected intelligence gathering on the night of and in the first
weeks after the murder (ibid.: ch. 11, 18), the delayed arrest of five prime suspects in spite
of substantial leads only days after the murder (ibid.: ch. 13, 14), insufficient
identification of further suspects (ibid.: ch. 20), as well as lack of knowledge about
previous racist murder cases in the area (ibid.: 12.76, 13.47). More generally, various
police officers who had been involved at different points in the investigation reportedly
denied the possibility of a racist motivation. During the public inquiry, one investigating
officer called the perpetrators ‘thugs who were out to kill, not particularly a black person,
but anybody and I believe that to this day that that was thugs, not racism, just pure bloody
minded thuggery.’ (cited in ibid.19.34)

The ‘cumulative effect’ (Bowling/Phillips 2002: 241) of this ‘sequence of disasters

and disappointments’ (Macpherson 1999: 2.1) was that the Crown Prosecution Service
decided twice not to continue with the fourth step of a criminal prosecution (ibid.: 28.1,
33.28). 107 In spite of this complete failure, the internal police review concluded that ‘[t]he
investigation has been progressed satisfactorily and all lines of inquiry correctly pursued.’
(cited in ibid.: 28.29) It is now well-documented that racist beliefs and practices played a
significant role as an underlying factor at all stages of the police investigation. Both

107
The only remaining judicial option at that time remained was a private prosecution which the Lawrence
family initiated in 1995 and 1996 (see section 7.2.3).

199
Brooks and the Lawrence family reported that the behaviour of many police officers from
the lowest to the highest ranks amounted to an atmosphere of indifference, suspicion,
hostility and even victim blaming. For instance, Brooks was repeatedly stereotyped as
‘very agitated’, ‘very aggressive’ and ‘highly excitable’ (cited in ibid. 5.10), or
‘aggressive, anti-police, distressed and unhelpful’; ‘powerful and physically intimidating’
and ‘horrendous’ (cited in ibid.: 5.31). Furthermore, the initial assumption of many
investigating officers was that Lawrence had died during a fight (ibid.: 5.11, 11.13). This
suggests that the officers interpreted the incident as a violent altercation between Black
and white youths rather than as an unprovoked racist attack. Furthermore, the Lawrence
family reported that they were stereotyped as being unreasonable, emotion-driven, and
suspicious. As Doreen Lawrence testified at the public inquiry,

[b]asically, we were seen as gullible simpletons. This is best shown by Detective

Chief Superintendent Ilsley's comment that I had obviously been primed to ask
questions. Presumably, there is no possibility of me being an intelligent, black
woman with thoughts of her own who is able to ask questions for herself. (cited in
ibid.: 4.4)

Neville Lawrence added that ‘[i]t is clear to me that the police come in with the idea that
the family of black victims are violent criminals who are not to be trusted.’ (cited in ibid.)
This defamation of the Lawrence family was accompanied by the assumption that they
were under the control of anti-racist political agitators, such as the family lawyer Imran
Khan who, as one of the Senior Investigating Officers claimed, ‘hijacked the family’ and
‘turned the case into a political bandwagon’ (cited in ibid.: 33.50). Subsequent
investigations have revealed that such narratives significantly informed the police
response to the Lawrence case. For instance, the Lawrence Inquiry found that the main
reason for the delay of the initial surveillance of the five suspects was that the only
available surveillance team had already been booked ‘to observe a young black man
suspected of theft’ (ibid.: 18.19). This prioritisation of a ‘minor offence’ (ibid.: 18.4) over
a racist murder gives an indication of the extent to which the operational agenda of the
police forces was gripped by the notion of “black crime”. At this point, it also needs to
be highlighted that recent years have brought to light further allegations against the
Metropolitan Police. In June 2013, a former Metropolitan Police officer told the Guardian
that he and other officers had been tasked in the early 1990s to spy on and search for ways
to smear the reputation of the Lawrence family (Guardian 24/06/13). In the following
months and years, there have been further allegations that dozens other bereaved families
200
as well as a much broader range of primarily left-wing political organisations have been
targeted by police spy activities (see Guardian 28/10/20; see also Bonino/Kaoullas 2015).
It remains to be seen whether these allegations, which are the subject of an ongoing public
inquiry, will be further confirmed.

It could be suggested that these responses were nothing more than the result of an
internal police culture. However, in light of the contextual analysis provided in section
7.1, it can be suggested that they were a direct expression of dominant tendencies in the
wider public discourse about ‘race’, crime and politics in the early 1990s. The “fighting”
narrative neatly fit the political and media debates about everyday tensions and organised
violence between Black and white youths in urban “problem areas”. The “hijacking”
narrative was a key component of the conspiratorial rumours by Conservative politicians
and right-wing journalists about so-called anti-racist “extremists” intent on disrupting the
Britain’s stability. What is more, these narratives were expressed in terms of colonial
associations of Blackness with aggression and emotionality, lack of intelligence and
autonomy. Thus, it is no exaggeration to state that from the night of the murder the
Lawrence family and Brooks were confronted not simply with a number of insensitive
and prejudiced police officers, but with an police occupational culture that emerged from
and aligned with those parts of mainstream politics and discourse that promoted racism
and demonised anti-racism. 108 The police approach to the Lawrence case also revealed
that previous reform efforts – in particular since the publication of the first Home Office
report on “racial attacks” as well as the Scarman report in 1981 – had largely failed. For
it barely differed from those other cases analysed in the previous chapters. In order to
illustrate this, it is worthwhile to compare the above-mentioned statement ‘that that was
thugs, not racism, just pure bloody minded thuggery.’ (cited in Macpherson 1999: 19.34)
with the response to the murder of Kelso Cochrane in 1959: ‘We are satisfied that it was
the work of a group of about six white anti-law teenagers who had only one motive in

108
The police’s submission of written evidence to the Lawrence Inquiry revealed further evidence of such
a hostile and discriminatory police culture. For instance, the Police Policy Directorate of the Home Office
submitted an extract from an ‘Information Pack for personnel joining Southall Division’ which included a
short historical overview of communal life and “race relations” in Southall. However, the main emphasis
was not on the experience of racism, but on alleged conflicts between ‘Asian gangs’ that ‘used violence to
resolve differences’ (cited in NA NT 1/67). Furthermore, the political protests against the activities of the
National Front in Southall in the late 1970s and early 1980s were discredited as ‘disorder’ that ‘was kindled
by left wing groups agitating the community with tales of a National Front Invasion.’ (ibid.) The real threat
of racist and neo-Nazi violence was completely erased from this account.

201
view – robbery or attempted robbery […].’ (cited in Daily Mirror 19/05/59) It does not
require much effort to see that these responses were almost identical.

7.2.3 Minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist protest dynamics

As was indicated in the introduction to this chapter, the overwhelming focus of the
academic literature on the Lawrence case has been on the institutional responses,
especially the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and Macpherson Report. The protest and
campaigning activities which surrounded and impacted on these institutional procedures,
however, have attracted much less attention. The only exception is a study by Shukra et
al. (2004) who make a valuable contribution to exploring the impact of the Lawrence case
on the field of minority politics in the late 1990s and early 2000s. What is more, they
situate these developments within a wider ‘a shift in movement priorities from campaigns
to institution-oriented interventions (ibid.: 35) that share the ‘desire to speak to the
mainstream and to influence British institutions’ (ibid.: 46). In this section, I will qualify
this observation in two ways: First, while in this study the immediate struggles over the
Lawrence case are only discussed as a circumstantial factor, I will put them centre stage.
Second, I seek to demonstrate that the relationship between ‘integrationist’ and
‘autonomous’ approaches (Ashe et al. 2016: 37) remained complex throughout the 1990s.
In this section, I will begin with an examination of wider protest activities. In the next
section, I will continue with activist interventions at the institutional level.

The family and community responses to the murder of Lawrence were quite similar
to many previous cases since the late 1970s. One of the first organisational responses was
the establishment of the Stephen Lawrence Family Campaign which included not only
members of the Lawrence family and their legal representatives, but also anti-racist
organisations such as the Southall Monitoring Group (Shukra et al. 2004: 37; BGA
BG/P/12/5/2). The chosen family lawyers, too, had a background of political activism.
Imran Khan was at that time a young lawyer with a previous experience of pro bono legal
support in Southall (Black Lawyers Directory 2015). Michael Mansfield was already an
established civil rights lawyer whose previous high-profile cases included the
representation of Frank Crichlow, Arthur Scargill and, as was discussed in chapter 6,
bereaved families in the New Cross case. Thus, the Lawrence family was from the
beginning supported by campaigners and lawyers who were familiar with the challenges
and impediments that lay ahead and for that reason highlighted the significance of an
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organised approach to both institutional and public interventions. An important public
event organised by the Stephen Lawrence Family Campaign only days after the murder
was the visit of Nelson Mandela which played a significant role in attracting media
attention to the case (Guardian 07/05/93; Times 10/05/93; Daily Mail 10/05/93a; Daily
Mirror 08/05/93).

In addition to the campaigning activities of the Lawrence family and their direct
supporters, there was a wide range of actors that became involved in the politicisation of
the Lawrence case. Here again, these protest dynamics did not appear out of thin air but
were part of the wider shifts in the area of minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist politics
discussed in section 7.1.2. Most notably, the relation between racist murder cases and the
activities of the BNP in south-east London had already become the subject of various
protest demonstrations in the early 1990s. In November 1992, for instance, the Rohit
Duggal Campaign, the Indian Workers’ Association, the Greenwich Action Committee
Against Racial Attacks (GACARA), Anti-Fascist Action, and Searchlight Magazine
initiated a protest march in Eltham following the murder of Rohit Duggal, which was also
supported by the Anti-Nazi League and the Anti-Racist Alliance and was attended by
more than 1,000 people (Searchlight 12/92). In the wake of the protest, thousands of local
residents signed a petition to close down the BNP headquarters (ibid.: 12) In February
1993, the GACARA, the Anti-Nazi League, the Rohit Duggal Campaign and various
other actors organised a torchlight vigil in protest at the failure of Bexley Council to close
down the BNP headquarters (Searchlight 02/93).

It was this protest dynamic which was immediately taken up following the murder
of Stephen Lawrence. In the first two weeks of May, there were two different protest
marches in south-east London which attracted at least 1,500 participants respectively
(Observer 16/05/93). This suggests that there was considerable potential for political
opposition to racist violence in general and the BNP presence in particular. But there was
also another reason for the organisation of two different protest rallies within such a short
time period. For there were considerable cleavages among those actors involved in the
struggles over the Lawrence case – a development that echoed the wider fragmentations
within the field of minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist politics discussed in section 7.1.3.
More specifically, there were three different currents which for both strategic and political
reasons became unwilling to cooperate with each other: First, there were organisations
such as the Indian Workers’ Association, the Anti-Nazi League, GACARA and

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Searchlight that advocated the strategy of forming multi-racial alliances but were accused
by the second current of damaging the principle of Black leadership. This second current
included organisations such as the Anti-Racist Alliance that put a much stronger emphasis
on such a principle but were accused by the first current of promoting a Black separatism
that reproduces essentialist distinctions of blackness and whiteness. There was also a third
current of largely white Trotskyite leftists who advocated militant action against police
forces and far-right groups. This current was primarily involved in the first rally which
indeed resulted in physical altercations with the police, resulting in 19 injured people,
including five police officers (Observer 16/05/93; see also Daily Mail 10/05/93b). This
approach was strongly condemned by both the first and second current. The family
struggle, too, was informed by these conflict dynamics. For instance, the Lawrence family
refused to cooperate with GACARA (see Macpherson 1999: 26.13) and strongly
condemned the first march (see Daily Mail 10/05/93b). On the other hand, family
members were actively involved in the organisation of the second march (see Observer
16/05/93).

These conflict dynamics indeed revealed a significant challenge for the prospect of
establishing a coherent activist response. What is remarkable, however, is that they did
not result in the disappearance of the strategic approach of coalition building and mass
mobilisation. On 16 October 1993, there was a major protest demonstration in Welling,
south-east London, that sought to ‘CLOSE DOWN THE BNP HQ’ (cited in Searchlight
08/93). This demonstration was still informed by this conflict insofar as ARA did not
participate and instead organised a much smaller alternative protest event in central
London. Furthermore, there was criticism that various Trotskyite groups sought to
confront police forces shielding off the BNP headquarters, thus provoking retributive
police violence. During the following altercations, ‘over 60’ (ibid.) protesters and 19
police officers (Times 18/10/93a) were injured. Apart from these conflicts, however, the
march became a remarkable moment of collective mobilisation. Among the list of
organisers and sponsors were not only those who had been involved in previous struggles
in south-east London, but also a much larger number of political actors. This included
minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist organisations (such as the Indian Workers’
Association, the Anti-Nazi League, Searchlight, the Campaign against Racism and
Fascism, the Southall Monitoring Group, the Newham Monitoring Project, GACARA,
the Jewish Socialist Group, Youth Against Racism in Europe, the National Union of
Refugee Organisations), family justice campaigns (such as the Rohit Duggal and Rolan

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Adams Family Campaigns); trade union organisations (such as local branches from
Unison, the Transport and General Workers’ Union or the Civil and Public Services
Association), local race relations bodies (such as Bexley and Greenwich Councils for
Racial Equality), and political parties and party bodies (such as the Socialist Workers
Party and Labour students) (listed in Searchlight 10/93). While police and media
estimations ranged from 15,000 to 25,000 participants (Daily Mail 18/10/93; Times
18/10/93b), the Anti-Nazi League stated that ‘over 60,000’ (cited in TNA NT 1/5)
protesters took the streets on that day. This would make it one of the largest anti-racist
and anti-fascist demonstrations in British post-war history. The Anti-Nazi League further
characterised the variety of participants in the following way:

The planned march received wide support amongst a wide layer of people. This was
demonstrated on the day by the turnout: there were present young and old, trade
unionists and unemployed, students and anti-racist organisations. The demonstration
was addressed by MPs, the father of murdered teenager Rolan Adams, two Holocaust
survivors and trade union officials.’ (ibid.)

It is worthwhile to reflect upon the underlying reasons for this insistence on a

mobilisational approach. My argument is that for these actors the culture of racist hostility
and violence was still highly prevalent even after various legislative initiatives in the area
of “race relations” and anti-discrimination. Thus, they remained sceptical about the
British state’s self-reforming capacities and instead highlighted the necessity to put
external pressure on political decision-makers through the dual strategy of street presence
and media attention. What is more, the large number of groups, organisations and
campaigns involved suggests that these actors considered it necessary to leave aside
strategic and political differences in order to achieve a common goal: to fight against the
BNP as well as the problem of racist violence in south-east London and elsewhere in the
UK. It can be suspected that such public pressure played an important role in the local
authorities’ eventual decision to close down the BNP headquarters in summer 1995
(Searchlight 08/95). From a broader historical perspective, then, it can be argued that the
early phase of minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist responses to the Lawrence case was
still informed by the strategy of autonomous mass mobilisation which had played an
important role in the previous two decades. In this sense, the “Unity March” was
reminiscent of the mobilisational responses to the Chaggar case in 1976, the New Cross
case in 1981, as well as the Groce and Jarrett cases in 1985 (see chapters 5 and 6).

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7.2.4 Institutional struggles

The period between 1994 and 1997 was primarily characterised by the relentless
institutional struggles of the Lawrence family and their direct legal and political
supporters. From the establishment of a private murder investigation in 1996 to the
initiation of a Police Complaints Authority investigation in 1997, it was the Lawrence
family – and not the criminal justice system – which became the key driving force in the
search for truth and the fight for justice. This is even more remarkable as their efforts
were significantly impeded not only by the missed opportunities of the initial police
investigation, but also by the institutional selectivities inscribed into the judicial and
complaints procedure. For instance, the PCA report, which was published in December
1997, only criticised some aspects of the police investigation and concluded that there
was ‘no evidence to support the allegation of racist conduct by any Metropolitan Police
Officer involved in the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence’ (cited in
Macpherson 1999: 6.2). 109 It was this ongoing reluctance to accept significant failures as
well as the problem of institutional racism which led the Lawrence family to approach
the government and request the establishment of a public inquiry. While the previous
Major government had repeatedly dismissed the necessity of any significant reform
approach, the newly formed New Labour government accepted the request. Looking back
at the post-war history of Labour politics, this was indeed an historically unprecedented
decision. As discussed in chapter 4, it was a Labour government that rejected demands
for a public inquiry following the racist murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in May 1976.
It was only throughout the 1980s that a growing number of Labour politicians became
perceptive to the demands of bereaved Black and Asian families.

In the following, I will primarily focus on the institutional struggles that took place
during the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. For, while the institutional struggles before 1997
have already be reconstructed in detail (see in particular Cathcart 2001), these struggles
have received much less attention. What is more, this research focus provides new
insights about the broader political significance of the Lawrence case. In the existing body
of literature, the Lawrence Inquiry is primarily discussed as an official investigative
procedure which – except for a limited number of witnesses, experts, and officials –
remained largely detached from the wider configuration of political actors involved in the

109
For a testimonial account of the pain, stress, and frustration which the Lawrence family endured during
these institutional struggles, see Doreen Lawrence’s book And Still I Rise (Lawrence 2007)

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conflicts over the Lawrence case. In this sense, the Lawrence inquiry is usually portrayed
as a confined formal procedure where terms of references were formulated, evidence was
heard, conclusions were drawn, and a final report was published. However, my archival
research has revealed a more complex picture. For what made it special as an institutional
setting was that it allowed external actors to submit written evidence, statements,
recommendations etc. In this sense, the public inquiry became a ‘window of opportunity’
(Murji 2010: 355) that attracted the attention and intervention of a plethora of different
political actors. According to the official files of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry held at
the National Archives, there were more than 175 groups, organisations and institutions
that tried to intervene in the second part of the inquiry. 110 Among these were at least seven
different types of actors: first, governmental and repressive state apparatuses, such as the
Metropolitan Police Service (TNA NT 1/176), the Crown Prosecution Service (TNA NT
1/2, 1/41, 1/42), and the Home Office (TNA NT 1/66, 1/67); second, associative state
apparatuses such as the PCA (TNA NT 1/116, 1/118), the Commission for Racial Equality
(TNA NT 1/40), or various Race Equality Councils (TNA NT 1/125); third, politicians
and party-political bodies, such as the London Group of Labour MPs (1/83) or Poale Zion
(TNA NT 1/117); fourth, various academics, such as Gargi Bhattacharyya (TNA NT
1/43), Benjamin Bowling (TNA NT 1/167), Barnor Hesse (TNA NT 1/168), Gus John
(TNA NT 1/123) or Robin Oakley (TNA NT 1/49); fifth, trade unions such as Bristol
Trades Union Council (TNA NT 1/160), Unison (TNA NT 1/164), or the National
Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (1/107); sixth, religious
associations such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews (TNA NT 1/142) or the Union
of Muslim Organisations of UK and Eire (TNA NT 1/162); and finally, a wide range of
minority, anti-racist, anti-fascist and civil rights actors. These included the West Indian
Standing Conference (TNA NT 1/171), the Pan African Caribbean Community
Organisation (TNA NT 1/114), the Society of Black Lawyers (TNA NT 1/155), the
National Assembly against Racism (TNA NT 1/106), the 1990 Trust (TNA NT 1/140),
the Institute of Race Relations (TNA NT 1/149), NMP and SMG (TNA NT 1/111), the
Anti-Nazi League (TNA NT 1/5), Searchlight (TNA NT 1/133), INQUEST (TNA NT
1/68), the Runnymede Trust (TNA NT 1/154), or Liberty (TNA NT 1/79). Among those
submitting evidence were also bereaved families and justice campaigns, such as the Joy
Gardner Memorial Campaign (TNA NT 1/70), or the parents of Ricky Reel who was in

110
The first part entailed 59 days of public hearings that took place between 16 March and 13 November
1998 (see TNA NT 2).

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all likelihood murdered by racists in 1997 (TNA NT 1/37). It is striking that these
submissions, opened to public scrutiny between 2005 and 2012, have been not been
examined in a systematic fashion. 111 For they offer a unique opportunity to explore in
which ways the different actors intervened in the inquiry, what kind of critique they
formulated, and what overall political significance they attributed to the Lawrence
Inquiry. More generally, these submissions represent an historically unprecedented type
of public pressure activity and thus provide a new perspective on the question to what
extent the Lawrence Inquiry represented a watershed in the political struggles over racist
violence and state racism at the turn of the millennium. In the following, I will analyse a
selection of those submissions that formulated anti-racist positions, focusing especially
on activist contributions.

My overall suggestion is to distinguish between two tendencies. One the one hand,
there was a number of groups, organisations and campaigns whose concerns and demands
turned out to be compatible with Macpherson’s political agenda. These actors were indeed
highly critical of the existence of a culture of racism within the police force, but primarily
explained this through notions of “unconscious bias” and “lack of awareness”. For
instance, the London Group of Labour MPs condemned the problem of ‘racist attitudes
and of ineptitude and incompetence in pursuing clearly racist crime’ (TNA NT 1/83), but
primarily attributed this to a lack of ‘effectiveness with which this anti-racist strategy has
been implemented at the operational level’ (ibid.), thus resulting in the problem that ‘in
many areas officers seem to be unaware of the guidance.’ (ibid.) Similarly, the Pan
African Caribbean Community Organisation formulated a cautious critique of police
racism by using terms such as ‘overlooked’, ‘misjudged’, ‘failure to appreciate’ and ‘few
agencies […] have taken seriously’ (TNA NT 1/114). Many recommendations which
these actors made were later taken up in the Macpherson Report, such as racism
awareness training, the increase of minority recruitment, or the strengthening of anti-
racist legislation (Macpherson 1999: chapter 47). But they also highlighted one
recommendation which, as will be discussed further below, was consistently ignored by
Macpherson: the provision of financial and organisational support to the victims of
racism, justice campaigns and monitoring groups.

111
The only exception is a study by Murji (2010) that examines the submissions of two academics,
Benjamin Bowling and Barnor Hesse, but does not take into consideration the full scope of public
interventions.

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 On the other hand, there was a number of actors that formulated a more radical
critique of popular, official and institutional racism. These actors were more ambivalent
towards the Lawrence Inquiry. On the one hand, there was widespread agreement that it
was a significant, even historically unprecedented, moment of institutional reform. The
very fact that organisations such as the Institute of Race Relations, the Southall
Monitoring Group, the Newham Monitoring Project, the Anti-Nazi League, or
Searchlight considered it important to submit evidence attests to this. On the other hand,
however, they remained sceptical about the potential of such an institutional reform
process. As the Southall Monitoring Group and the Newham Monitoring Project put it in
their collaborative submission,

[t]he invitation to present submissions and recommendations to this panel of inquiry

is welcomed but with apprehension. The inquiry is specific and time limited, but its
work has criss-crossed a myriad of issues and interrelations that cannot be addressed
within the parameters that has been set by the Home Secretary. (TNA NT 1/111)

The main reason is that their political perspective was informed by the experience of
racism as an endemic reality that continued to shape the fabric of British society. This is
also why their recommendations usually went beyond the area of policy and also included
the demand for more fundamental societal change: ‘[…] the cul-de-sac’s of race-
awareness training, toothless talking shops of police community consultancy groups and
even the call for more black police officers, all these initiatives completely fail to
understand the true nature of the problem.’ (TNA NT 1/111) They added that ‘[a]ll our
recommendations […] are underpinned by structural changes that must take place in
many other areas such as education, local government, and the administration of the
criminal justice system itself.’ (ibid.) Various organisations also put into question the
dominance of essentialist “race relations” paradigms and instead pointed to the social and
political conditions of racist hostility and violence, including entrenched structures of
power and precarious living conditions. For instance, the Afro-Caribbean and Asian
Forum stated:

It is insufficient to regard individual racial attacks as single isolated crimes. It is also

inadequate to ascribe the cause of racism as attitudes of individual white people, or
abstract cultural differences. Incidents of racial discrimination and racial violence
stem from structural inequalities in society. Power resides in the white community,
and law is in the hands of the dominant culture. Racial assaults and murders are the

209
 extreme manifestation of structural inequalities. An effective long term response to
racial violence requires that both the symptoms (assaults, criminal damage, verbal
abuse) and the underlying causes are tackled.’ (TNA NT 1/4)

A stronger socio-economic explanatory perspective was formulated by Searchlight

Magazine:

If economic deprivation and social insecurity contribute to increased racial tensions,

then alleviating these conditions will automatically reduce racism. The government,
local authorities and the population as a whole need to recognise that improvements
to employment, housing and planning policies are needed, and more than lip service
paid to equal opportunities.’ (TNA NT 1/133)

At the same time, the authors did not fall into the trap of rationalising racist attitudes by
falsely assuming that these automatically emerge from experiences of frustration and
dissatisfaction associated with precarious living conditions. For instance, they stress the
important role far-right political organisations play in transforming socio-economic
grievances into racist hatred, and in transforming that hatred into acts of violence:

Far-right groups such as the British National Party (BNP), Combat 18 (C18) and the
National Front (NF) are not the cause of racism within our society. However they
breed on existing prejudices, give an articulation to those people who are racist and
add encouragement and legitimacy to those who actively hate people from different
cultural and ethnic backgrounds. (ibid.)

Similar to the first tendency, there was also a strong call for the strengthening of minority
voices within the inquiry. For instance, the groups Black Women for Wages for
Housework and Legal Action for Women called upon the inquiry panel ‘to hear directly
from victims of police racism, their families and supporters’ (TNA NT 1/25) as well as
‘from people who have been criminalised for defending themselves against racist attacks.’
(ibid.) It also needs to be stressed that these were the only organisations that pointed to
the significance of the experiences of Black women in the everyday and political struggle
against (violent) racism: ‘Black women must be heard. Without women’s voices, much
of what Black families and communities suffer in surviving racist violence and pursuing
justice remains hidden.’ (ibid.) In addition to the public inquiry itself, this demand for the
strengthening of minority perspectives was also extended to the wider area of political
and legal work. For instance, INQUEST demanded that ‘[t]he role of community groups,
particularly the few remaining independent racial harassment and police monitoring
210
groups needs to be given far greater recognition.’ (TNA NT 1/68) This is very interesting
because it shows that these actors consistently attempted to expand and transgress the
scope of the inquiry’s reform agenda. In other words, they tried to convince the inquiry
panel that the success of institutional reform efforts depends on the extent to which
minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist actors located outside of the political mainstream are
supported.

Despite their political differences, all these interventions can be regarded as a

collective attempt to make the pervasive reality of racism undeniable. It can be suspected
that these submissions played a crucial role for Macpherson’s conclusions that there is a
general problem of institutional racism in the British police. What is striking, however, is
that most of these voices were rarely represented in the Macpherson report. In terms of
political representation, there was in fact a great irony at the heart of the report: On the
one hand, Macpherson did not shy away from expressing strong sympathies with the
concerns and demands of the Lawrence family, Duwayne Brooks and racialised minority
communities more generally. Furthermore, he recommended what is now known as the
“Macpherson Principle”: that those affected by racism should be acknowledged as the
primary definers of racism (Macpherson 1999: chapter 47, recommendation no. 12). To
hear such positions from a former High Court judge who represented the highest level of
‘state talk’ (Pemberton 2008) was indeed remarkable. On the other hand, a closer look at
the report shows that Macpherson actually did not listen to ‘many sounds and echoes
concerning […] the wide perceptions of minority ethnic communities that their cases are
improperly investigated and that racist crime and harassment are inadequately regarded
and pursued.’ (Macpherson 1999: 2.16) While some actors were acknowledged, others
were either ignored, backgrounded or discredited as “unconstructive criticism”. This can
be illustrated by looking at the notion of institutional racism which in the report was
defined as the ‘collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and
professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin’ (ibid.:
6.34). Furthermore, there was a strong emphasis on ‘unwitting prejudice, ignorance,
thoughtlessness’ (ibid.), suggesting that racist stereotyping usually takes place beneath
the level of conscious decisions. There was, in fact, not a single example of racist
stereotyping by police officers which the report did not interpret as “unwitting”. It goes
without saying that Macpherson and his team had to decide on some definition of the
term. Nonetheless, there is barely any discussion of the complex discussions about this
concept within activist milieus, as evidenced by the variety of submissions to the inquiry.

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What is more, there is no acknowledgement that a large number of activists proposed a
notion of institutional (or structural) racism that was incompatible with the “unwitting”
thesis as they also pointed to the significance of conscious decision-making processes as
well as a wider occupational culture within which racist stereotypes flourished more
explicitly. 112 In these submissions, there was also a much stronger emphasis on the
oppressive, violent character of policing which did not explicitly appear in the
formulation “failure to provide an appropriate and professional service”. Another major
difference was that the Macpherson report did not recommend strengthening independent
justice campaigns, monitoring groups and other oppositional political actors. There is a
remarkable passage where Macpherson contrasts the statements of two witness statements
about the usefulness of Racial Incident Units (RIUs) within the police service. On the one
hand, the inquiry heard from the Head of Department of Greenwich Council who made
moderate suggestions about reforming and strengthening such RIUs. On the other hand,
a representative of GACARA formulated a stronger critique of such an exclusive focus
on internal police procedures which in the past have failed to initiate any significant
change. While the former was praised as ‘an impressive and a careful witness’ who
‘prepared a perceptive report for the benefit of the Inquiry and the public.’ (ibid.: 36.2),
the latter was portrayed as being ‘somewhat grudging in his response’ (ibid.: 36.31) and
‘reluctant to accept that the Racial Incident Unit had achieved anything’ (ibid.: 36.25).
Furthermore, it was suggested that the GACARA representative was only critical because
‘his organisation had something to fear in a sense from the success of the Racial Incident
Unit.’ (ibid.: 36.28) This dismissal of GACARA was reminiscent of the above-mentioned
claim by then Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke that many anti-racist organisations are
nothing more than political opportunists primarily concerned about their own power
position (see section 7.1.1). From a relational perspective, then, the Lawrence inquiry can
be regarded as an official institutional terrain that was characterised by the simultaneous
process of amplifying and containing, acknowledging and discrediting, anti-racist voices.
While in the early to mid-1990s these actors were primarily confronted with repressive
and denunciatory state responses, they now had to deal with an official body that claimed
to be responsive to their demands, but in fact strongly distinguished between legitimate
and illegitimate demands. It is remarkable that various organisations had already

112
See for example the submissions by the Afro-Caribbean and Asian Forum (NA NT 1/4), Black Women
for Wages for Housework and Legal Action for Women (1/25), INQUEST (1/68), Liberty (1/79),
NMP/SMG (1/111), or Searchlight (1/133) – For a critique of this “unwitting racism” thesis, see Bourne
(2001).

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anticipated this outcome of the public inquiry. For instance, Black Women for Wages for
Housework and Legal Action for Women warned in their submission that

[i]f the majority of those giving evidence are members of the establishment,
professionals, and so-called race and legal experts, the recommendations they make
may not represent what victims and their families want and need. How will the
Inquiry get to the truth without hearing from those most deeply affected by racist
violence, the police response to it, and racist police violence? (TNA NT 1/25)

Given that Shukra et al. (2004) have already provided valuable insights into the
broader political campaigns that have emerged in the context of the Lawrence case, in
particular the formation of National Civil Rights Movement (NCRM), I do not consider
it necessary to reconstruct this aspect of the Lawrence case in greater detail. Looking at
their evaluation of the NCRM’s political profile, however, I would like to add some
qualifications. NCRM was founded in the immediate aftermath of the publication of the
Macpherson Report as an attempt to establish a broader organisational base for a variety
of family justice campaigns that have raised concerns similar to the those of the Stephen
Lawrence Family Campaigns. This was a direct response to the ambivalences of the
“Macpherson moment”. On the one hand, this moment was seen as a unique opportunity
for bereaved families and anti-racist campaigners to reach a mainstream public audience.
On the other hand, it was expected that, in light of the ongoing hypocrisy and indifference
in hegemonic political discussions, this moment would quickly wane in the absence of
ongoing public pressure. Unsurprisingly, then, NCRM was initiated by exactly those
political actors that remained sceptical about the Macpherson Report’s transformative
potential, such as the Southall Monitoring Group, the Institute of Race Relations and the
Campaign against Racism and Fascism (Shukra 2004: 38; CARF 02+03/01). During the
launch event in March 1999, Suresh Grover from the Southall Monitoring Group, was
reported as stating that:

[o]ver the last 20 years the situation for black people this country has got worse.
They have become poorer, while more and more people are getting a raw deal from
the criminal justice system. We have a window off [sic] opportunity now, as a result
of the campaigning about the Lawrence case. We mustn’t lose this moment.’ (cited
in Guardian 29/03/99)

According to Shukra et al., the NCRM can be characterised as a good example of the
politics of establishing a ‘transitional public sphere’ (Shukra 2004). This is a convincing

213
way of conceptualising NCRM’s political profile insofar as it takes into account the
complex tension between mobilisational and institutional approaches which, as was
discussed in this case study, had already shaped the previous minority, anti-racist and
anti-fascist responses to the Lawrence case. Eventually, however, Shukra et al. observe a
tendency among such transitional political actors to prioritise a mainstream-oriented over
the community-based focus, which is usually accompanied by the growing failure to
formulate a critique of the political mainstream. Against this background, they discuss
NCRM as an example of a political approach that focuses on ‘questions of strategy and
policy rather than on service delivery for minority communities or single-issue
campaigning’ (ibid.: 38), that is ‘strongly legalistic’ (ibid.: 44), and that tends to ‘move
in a moderate direction’ (ibid.: 46) Taking a closer look at NCRM’s self-understanding
and activities, however, it is difficult to sustain these assumptions. In a NCRM newsletter
from 2001, for instance, it is stated that

In recent years a number of families of the victims of injustice have shown a

remarkable determination to campaign for truth and accountability. Their experience
and confidence form the basis of the National Civil Rights Movement. […] Our aim
is to provide support for the victims of racial injustice, to promote family-based
campaigns and to challenge the criminal justice system. (CARF 04+05/01).

It might indeed be suggested that the demands for “truth” and “accountability” primarily
indicate an institutional reform agenda. But the authors also clearly distance themselves
from the criminal justice system by identifying it as an opponent that needs to be
“challenged”, and by putting it in the broader context of “racial injustice”. There is also
evidence to suggest that efforts were made to broaden and deepen community-based
mobilisation rather than moving in the direction of mainstream-oriented professionalism.
In a call for an annual NCRM conference two years after its formation, for instance, it is
stated that

the organisation has struggled to establish a broad national network, to link together
different family and to develop a grassroots movement for change in the criminal
justice system. There have been successes on some high-profile campaigns, but we
have yet to consolidate a broader anti-racist agenda which could combine issues of
asylum rights, racist violence and police brutality. (CARF 04+05/01)

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From a strategic point of view, this approach does not actually represent a
significant departure from earlier attempts to transform the political momentum of
single high-profile cases into more extensive and durable grassroots campaigns.

7.2.5 Hegemonic political and media responses

The hegemonic political and media responses played an important role in accompanying
– but also actively intervening in – the political and institutional struggles over the
Lawrence case. In the previous chapters, it was shown that there had been a longstanding
practice of reproducing and amplifying police interpretations, especially on the political
right. A noteworthy feature of the Lawrence case is that leading politicians and news
organisations did not entirely take up the police narrative. For instance, the suspicion of
a racist motivation was highlighted in the first coverage of all the four analysed
newspapers (see for example Guardian 24/04/93; Times 24/04/93; Daily Mail 24/04/93;
Daily Mirror 24/04/93). Furthermore, the Lawrence case was immediately put into the
context of the racist murders of Rolan Adams, Rohit Duggal and, to a lesser extent,
Orville Blair (see for example Times 03/05/93, 19/06/93; Daily Mirror 24/04/93). It needs
to be added, however, that these attempts to contextualise the case remained rudimentary,
not least because it was only the Guardian that had consistently reported on those previous
cases. The Times, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, on the other hand, “discovered” these
stories only retrospectively. Furthermore, there was only minority of – mostly Labour –
politicians that attracted attention to all these cases and warned about the danger of far-
right violence in south-east London. Nonetheless, as already discussed in section 6.1.3,
the fact that even the conservative and populist right began to perceive these warnings
and acknowledged the racist motivation of the murder was only a recent development. 113
Another striking feature of the hegemonic public responses to the Lawrence case was that
no significant attempts were made to bring the Lawrence family into disrepute. Instead,
they were portrayed as hard-working, law-abiding, culturally integrated British citizens.
For instance, the Daily Mail described Stephen Lawrence as ‘a hard working sixth former’
(Daily Mail 10/05/93b) and ‘a devout Christian’ who ‘was modest and studious’ (ibid.),
and Doreen and Neville Lawrence as owners of a ‘comfortable home’ (ibid.) and

113
A historically comparative perspective helps to illustrate this: As was outlined in the previous chapters,
the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in 1976 and the New Cross fire in 1981 did not trigger such responses.
Denial and ignorance had been much more prevalent, even within the Labour Party and the social-
democratic and left-liberal segment of the news discourse.

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responsible parents who ‘encouraged his ambitions and were proud of his achievements’
(ibid.). The perpetrators, on the other hand, were condemned as ‘a gang of knife-wielding
thugs’ (ibid.). This sympathetic media coverage has already received scholarly attention
(see especially Cottle 2005; Holohan 2005; McLaughlin 2005; Cathcart 2017). Among
these approaches, however, there is a certain tendency to overstate the significance of
these responses. For instance, McLaughlin (2005) interprets the Daily Mail response as a
dual strategy of ‘recovering blackness’ and ‘repudiating whiteness’. Holohan even
interprets these responses as a process of reverse scapegoating that ‘projects the
traditional stereotype of the violent, animalistic, colonial other onto the working-class
white man’ (Holohan 2005: 10) because ‘in the post-colonial age of multiculturalism, it
is clear that the black man can no longer be easily understood as exotic or dangerous
other’ (ibid.). My argument, however, is that such evaluations are exaggerated. This can
be demonstrated by offering a more nuanced analysis of the broader discourse within
which the Lawrence case was embedded.

It is true that at the turn of the decade there was an incremental growth in public
attention to the problem of racist violence. A historically comparative analysis of the
parliamentary discourse is useful to illustrate this: In the period between 1980 and 1989,
I found 52 debates that primarily focused on “race”, “ethnic” or “community relations”.
These included 12 debates that were specifically dedicated to the problem of racist
discrimination, harassment, or violence. In the period between 1990 and 1999, these
numbers increased to 57 and 33 debates respectively. There was also a growing
attentiveness to incidents of deadly violence. For instance, the number of Black deaths in
custody that were mentioned at least once in parliamentary debates increased from 8 cases
between 1980 and 1989 to 37 cases between 1990 and 1999. 114 This development was
even stronger in relation to racist murder cases. While in the 1980s there was only one
case that received any parliamentary attention (the New Cross fire case analysed in
chapter 5), in the 1990s 14 cases were mentioned. The mass media discourse about racist
murder cases was characterised by similar patterns. Between 1980-89 and 1990-90, the
number of cases that were reported at least once increased in the Guardian from 11 to 38
cases, in the Times from 8 cases to 16 cases, in the Daily Mail from 6 to 21 cases, and in
the Daily Mirror from 3 to 11 cases. The development of the news discourse about Black

114
It should be noted, however, that a significant part of this high number was due to one parliamentary
speech made by Labour MP Harry Cohen in July 1995 during which the names of 69 Black individuals
who died in custody were read out. But even without this intervention, the number of represented cases
doubled from 8 to 16.

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deaths in custody, on the other hand, was less clear. While the number of reported Black
and Asian deaths in custody increased in the Guardian from 25 to 33 cases and in the
Times from 16 to 23 cases, it decreased in the Daily Mail from 12 to 10 cases, and in the
Daily Mirror from 7 to 3 cases. Overall, this indicates a certain degree of change, but it
does not justify the assumption of a massive historical breakthrough encompassing the
entire political landscape (Cottle 2004, 2005). What is more, it would be wrong to suggest
that the initiative to cover racist violence came from these hegemonic and media actors
themselves. In many cases, the successful attraction of wider public attention was the
result of a multi-step process: In a first step, there was the organisation of a family justice
campaign and/or wider protests and campaigns to which a larger number of minority,
anti-racist and anti-fascist actors contributed. In a second step, these campaigns and
protests were primarily taken up by left-wing and/or community-oriented councillors,
parliamentarians and journalists. 115 In a third step, then, there was a chance that these
cases began to resonate within the broader mainstream public sphere. 116 The following
example is useful to illustrate this dynamic: In the early 1990s, IRR and INQUEST
published various reports that documented all known cases of Black deaths in custody in
the post-war period (see for example IRR 1991). In July 1995, Labour politician Harry
Cohen secured a parliamentary debate on “Black People (Deaths in Custody)” and began
his opening speech by reading out the names of 69 Black individuals who, according to
IRR and INQUEST, died under suspicious circumstances in state custody between 1987
and 1995 (HC Deb 04/07/95: 287). This was, in fact, the first time that such an attempt
was made to commemorate Black victims of state violence. During his speech, Cohen
called this list of names ‘a roll call of shame for the British state and for Home Office
Minister, who have shown no concern about those deaths’ (ibid.) and demanded that
government officials ‘write to the families of every one of those individuals with an
explanation for their deaths.’ (ibid.) Immediately afterwards, the editorial team of the
Guardian decided to print Cohen’s speech in conjunction with Home Office Minister
David Maclean’s response, highlighting that it ‘needs to be read in full’ (Guardian
10/07/95). This was still a cautious intervention insofar it gave equal weight to Cohen’s
and Maclean’s contributions. Furthermore, the editors decided the replace the important

115
There was also a much smaller number of centrist and conservative liberals that contributed to this
problematisation of racism.
116
It can be argued that for many political and media actors that remained indifferent to the problem of
racist violence it became more difficult to simply ignore those cases once they have been established as
“newsworthy” or “politically relevant” in other segments of the public discourse.

217
part of reading out the victims’ names by the short remark ‘He then read the list of names.’
(ibid.) Nonetheless, it added further weight to Cohen’s strategy of amplifying the research
conducted by the IRR as well as the underlying concerns and demands of bereaved
families.

Overall, then, centrist and right-wing segments of the mainstream discourse rarely
took the initiative in raising public attention to the concerns of bereaved families and anti-
racist campaigners. Furthermore, the coverage of the Lawrence family was by far not the
only way in which racist murder cases or deaths in police custody were discursively
constructed throughout the 1990s. From the denial of a racist motivation to the blaming
of victims and the discrediting of bereaved families and political supporters, the entire
repertoire of pejorative responses remained a significant aspect of mainstream public
discussions. Negative portrayals of victims of racist attacks were especially widespread
if these could be integrated into the broader discourse about “crime” and “disorder” in the
“inner city”. Two examples from the early to mid-1990s suffice in order to illustate this.
On 12 August 1993, Joy Gardner, a 40-year-old Black woman, died while being arrested
and restrained by deportation police officers during a raid on her home. Her death led to
the formation of the Joy Gardner Memorial Campaign as well as various public protests
in London. In an illuminating study of the centrist-liberal and right-wing public discourse
about Gardner’s death, Ryan Erfani-Ghettani (2015) shows that there was a widespread
tendency, particularly among right-wing journalists and politicians, to uncritically
forward the Metropolitan police’s story which heavily drew on the demonisation and
criminalisation of Gardner as a “violent” and “threatening” person whose behaviour
justified the use of excessive force (thus blaming Gardner herself for her death) (ibid.:
103-07). In other news reports and public statements by Conservative politicians, Gardner
was stigmatised as an illegal immigrant, a welfare abuser, and as being potentially HIV-
positive (ibid.: 105-06). Furthermore, Erfani-Ghettani demonstrates that the protest
dynamics in the aftermath of Gardner’s death were strongly discredited as examples of
left-wing, anti-racist opportunism, and as potential sources of urban riots (ibid.: 107-09).
In April 1995, Donna O’Dwyer, a 26-year-old Black woman, died following an arson
attack on a private party that took place in a council estate flat in Leyton, East London.
The police investigators initially suspected a ‘black male’ (cited in Guardian 18/07/94)
but eventually arrested one of the neighbours who turned out to be a former NF member
with a record of racist harassment. In the ensuing trial, the perpetrator was convicted of
murder, but the possibility of a racist motivation was not discussed. The main reason was

218
that the police precluded such a possibility and decided to keep this aspect of its
investigation secret until the termination of the trial. As the Times reported, ‘A senior
police detective said that Thurston’s racist links were not disclosed to the jury because of
the prejudicial effect that would have. Noise rather than racism was regarded as the main
motive for the attack.’ (Times 28/09/95) It was this narrative that strongly influenced the
subsequent news coverage. While all of the four newspapers mentioned the perpetrator’s
far-right background after this information had been disclosed, they nonetheless put a
stronger explanation on the “noise” explanation: In almost identical terms it was alleged
that the main reason why the perpetrator ‘snapped’ (Daily Mail 28/09/95; Guardian
28/09/95) was that he suffered from ‘noise-rage’ (Guardian 13/09/95), was ‘ANGRY’
(Times 28/09/95) or ‘angered’ and ‘disturbed’ (Daily Mail 26/04/95) by what was
described as a ‘noisy’ (Daily Mail 29/09/95; Times 28/09/95; Guardian 28/09/95) reggae
party. 117 It is noteworthy that the Guardian, too, uncritically took up the “noise” theme.
However, it was especially the Daily Mail and the Times that put this case into the wider
context of “noisy reggae parties” taking place ‘[a]ll over Britain’ (Daily Mail 29/09/95;
see also Times 28/09/95). The case was also mentioned during a parliamentary speech by
Conservative MP Warren Hawksley as an example of ‘agitation caused by noise’ (HC
Deb 16/02/96: 1255). The most inflammatory depiction and condemnation of the party
was published by the Daily Mail. In a comment, the author combined various referential,
predicational and affective strategies in order to portray the party as the true cause of
O’Dwyer’s death, whereas the arson attack itself was relativised as a morally wrong yet
understandable over-reaction. It is particularly striking that the party itself was imagined
as an act of violence: The music, it was claimed, had ‘enough sonic power to make your
ears bleed’ (Daily Mail 29/09/95) and verged on ‘an artillery bombardment’ (ibid.). In
the imagination of the Daily Mail, then, the local residents were not confronted with a
harmless party but with something like a military operation disrupting the public order.
Against this background, the arson attack could be presented as a response to this violent
intrusion. The perpetrator was strongly condemned as an ‘unashamed racist’ (ibid.) and
even dehumanised as ‘vermin’ (ibid.), but his racism was politically downplayed as the
beliefs of a ‘psychopath’ (ibid.). The arson attack itself, however, was justified as a
‘hardly surprising’ (ibid.) response to a party which was seen as the true act of violence.
What is more, the predominantly Black party organisers and visitors were stigmatised as
members of a disrespectful, aggressive, and potentially criminal milieu that flourished in

117
The Daily Mirror did not report on that case.

219
inner-city council estates. Therefore, it was concluded, they ‘must also accept much of
the blame – and that includes the tragic Donna O’Dwyer’ (ibid.). Overall, then, the
relation between victim and perpetrator was blurred, if not entirely reversed. In this
example, at least, there was not the slightest sign of ‘social reflexivity and civil society
renewal’ (Cottle 2005: 54).

What is more, there is also evidence to suggest that the discursive representation of
the Lawrence case itself was – at least in the first weeks – more ambivalent. This can be
illustrated by looking at how the right-wing press attempted to frame the socio-
geographical context of the murder. On the one hand, there were indeed attempts to draw
a picture of Eltham as a calm orderly suburban residential area with decent, middle-class
residents such as the Lawrence family. The murder, then, was interpreted as the shocking
intrusion of violence from the outside. As the Daily Mail put it, it was a moment of ‘horror
in suburbia’ (Daily Mail 24/04/93). On the other hand, there were immediate reports of
potential “revenge attacks” by the Black community, especially its young generation.
Both the Daily Mail, the Times and the Daily Mirror immediately warned in the
subheadings of their first news articles on the story about ‘fear of reprisals’ (Daily Mail
24/04/93) and that ‘Police fear racist backlash’ (Times 24/04/93) and ‘Revenge vow in
“race feud”’ (Daily Mirror 24/04/93). In this sense, then, the murder was characterised as
part of a wider problem of “racial tensions” between both Black and white perpetrators.
What is more, Black residents were stigmatised as being prone to revengefulness and
vigilantism, that is, as potential perpetrators incapable of adapting to the minimum
standards of the rule of law. 118 This explanatory strategy was more explicitly informed
by the image of ‘racially sensitive inner-city areas’ (Daily Mail 26/04/91) which, as was
discussed earlier, continued to figure prominently in mainstream discussions. But many
commentators also expressed a certain degree of uncertainty about the significance of
“racial conflict” as an underlying factor. Forwarding a statement by one of the Senior
Investigating Officers, the Daily Mail wrote: ‘He said race relations in Eltham were not
significantly worse than in some other London boroughs but added: “I wouldn’t deny we
have a racial problem and it is not easy to deal with.”’ (Daily Mail 24/04/93)

It can be argued that this unclear portrayal of Eltham was an expression of the
ambivalences of the racialised post-crisis discourse discussed in the first section. On the

118
Only the Guardian and Observer avoided such a referential and explanatory strategy, and instead
foregrounded the ‘climate of fear’ (Observer 16/05/93; see also Guardian 24/04/93, 26/04/93) within the
local Black community in light of a consistent pattern of racist attacks and neo-fascist activity.

220
one hand, there was a need to tell the story of a Black middle-class family that lived in an
area where the problem of “racial tension” and “gang violence” had already been
overcome, but who was tragically reminded of the ongoing existence of an anachronistic
culture of violence in the inner city. This socio-geographical separation of the Lawrence
family from the “inner city”, it appears, was a key precondition for the more sympathetic
responses from the political right. At the same time, however, right-wing actors still found
it difficult to uphold this narrative and also remained open towards the possibility of
portraying the Lawrence murder as a just another case of “racial conflict” in London’s
“inner city”. This was not surprising because in the first weeks after the murder it was
still unclear how the family and other political actors would react to the murder. It was
especially the political responses to the protest dynamics which were clearly informed by
the decades-old and still widespread image of “race riots” taking place in the “inner city”.
Already one day before the “Unity March” in October 1993, Metropolitan Police
Commissioner Condon paved the way for such an interpretation by warning about
potential ‘mob violence’ (cited in Guardian 15/10/93). The immediate news coverage
predominantly portrayed the demonstration as an moment of violence and lawlessness,
with depictions such as ‘the worst civil violence since the poll tax riots’ (Guardian
18/10/93) in racism’s suburban battleground’ (ibid.), ‘Violence erupts at race march:
Police face bricks and bottles as 53 injured’ (Observer 17/10/93), ‘appalling orgy of
violence’ (Daily Mirror 18/10/93), ‘Anarchists were primed for confrontation” (Times
19/10/93), and ‘Victims of the Mob’ (Daily Mail 18/10/93). It has been convincingly
demonstrated that throughout the subsequent years of news coverage the second tendency
became the dominant one, which was primarily based on the successful depoliticisation
of the struggles of the Lawrence family by detaching from the broader configuration of
anti-racist mobilisation (Cottle 2004; McLaughlin 2005; Cathcart 2017). In the crucial
first weeks, however, it was at least unclear if the sympathetic portrayal of the Lawrence
family would persist. The underlying reason was that during the early to mid-1990s there
was still a strong tendency to offer racialised and spatialised ways of displacing socio-
economic crisis experiences.

7.3 Conclusion

In this chapter, I offered a re-examination of the circumstances and consequences of the

racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in the post-Thatcherite period. In the existing body of

221
literature there is a tendency to bifurcate between two types of periodisations: While some
understood the Lawrence case as nothing more than the latest manifestation of an
unchanged trajectory of racist violence, institutional racism and a broader culture of
indifference, others emphatically embraced it as an unprecedented historical break with
this trajectory. In retrospect, the second tendency was much more problematic insofar as
Macpherson’s promised moment of ‘catharsis’ (Macpherson 1999: 3.12) has never
actually occurred. And, as was demonstrated in the case study, for many political actors
involved in the struggles over the Lawrence case this did not come as a surprise. At the
same time, however, it is difficult to uphold the assumption that the political impact of
the Lawrence case was minimal at best. The very fact that for the first time in British
history a public inquiry into racist violence was established can only be dismissed as an
irrelevant footnote if it is detached from the decades-long history of political demands for
such public inquiries. Furthermore, the official acknowledgement of “institutional
racism” in the British police force has had a significant impact on the political debates
about racist violence and state racism in the post-Macpherson period. Indeed, as was
discussed in the case study, Macpherson’s definition of “institutional racism” as the result
of “unwitting” prejudice was a clever way of acknowledging the problem, without having
to go further down the road of disciplinary measures, criminal prosecutions, or more
fundamental political debates about the relation between policing and victimisation.
Furthermore, the ideological and processual selectivities that were at play during the
Lawrence inquiry show that for those political actors with a more radical critique of both
far-right, state, mass media and popular racism the room for manoeuvre within official
institutional settings continued to be extremely narrow. Compared to previous cases,
however, these selectivities were not expressed as open hostilities and direct exclusions,
but rather articulated through a discourse of inclusion and a practice of invitation. What
has changed, then, was less the potential for sufficiently tackling the problems of racist
violence and institutional racism, but rather the mode in which these problems could be
addressed in official public forums. Acknowledging this change is important because for
minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional actors it has led to new problems and
challenges. While in the past they had been confronted with state actors that largely
refused to listen to and interact with them, they were now confronted with state actors
that officially claimed to listen to them, but in fact only did so if this was applicable with
their own agenda.

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 The key argument of this chapter was that these ambivalences of the Lawrence case
can only be properly understood if they are situated in the broader socio-historical context
from which they emerged. While the existing literature has predominantly focused on the
political and institutional repercussions of the “post-Macpherson moment”, I sought to
demonstrate that the Lawrence case itself was a “post-moment” in the sense that it was
shaped by the debates and struggles of the previous decades in general and the
confrontational dynamics of the 1980s in particular. On the level of hegemonic politics
and media discourse, the Lawrence case was embedded within a racialised post-crisis
discourse that slightly moved away from the apocalyptic vision of Britain as a ‘nation of
no-go areas’ (Daily Mirror 25/10/85) that had figured prominently in the 1980s, but still
showed strong tendencies to interpret both incidents of racist violence themselves and the
political struggles in their aftermath as symptoms of “racial conflicts” in the “inner city”.
Thus, one of the preconditions for the relatively sympathetic media and political
responses was to detach the Lawrence family from this racialised “inner city” discourse
and instead to portray them as a good example of Britain’s post-crisis moment: as a hard-
working, law-abiding Black middle-class family that refused to cooperate with those
political agitators that have not moved on from the strife of the 1980s.

The field of minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist counter-hegemonic politics, too,

needs to be situated in a broader historical trajectory, in particular the shifts that had
occurred in the 1980s. On the one hand, there was still a strong awareness of the
seriousness of the problem of racist and far-right violence which by many actors was seen
as an expression of the ongoing socio-economic crisis tendencies in the post-Thatcherite
moment. On the other hand, the shifting political relations of forces, in particular the
growing significance of the Labour Party as a terrain of political intervention, led to new
debates about the potentials of ‘institution-oriented interventions’ (Shukra et al. 2004:
35). However, my research has shown that this was only one approach in a broader
political and strategic repertoire. Equally important was the strategy of self-organised
mass mobilisation in order to put pressure on the hegemonic political and official state
terrain from the outside. In this sense, then, the longstanding tension between
‘integrationist’ and ‘autonomous’ approaches (Ashe et al. 2016: 37), which, as was
discussed in chapter 4, emerged in the immediate aftermath of the 1958 racist riots and
the murder of Kelso Cochrane, was still undecided at the turn of the millennium.

223
224
8. Conclusion

It is time to finish with some concluding reflections that bring together the different
strands of the research presented in this thesis and point to future tasks and challenges.
One of the main aims of this thesis was to demonstrate that the politics of (anti-)racism
in modern British history cannot be fully grasped unless the political conflicts over its
violent manifestations are put centre stage. At the same time, I sought to show that this
impact can only be fully understood if these struggles are embedded within a broader
configuration of societal patterns, political relations of forces, institutional processes, and
public discourses. In this sense, I sought to demonstrate that what was a stake in these
political conflicts over racism and violence was always more than that. For, in the area of
hegemonic politics and discourse, there has been a strong tendency to approach these
confrontational episodes in terms of racialised crisis discourses that offered essentialist,
conformist and personalised explanatory frameworks in order to relate to a much broader
constellation of social and political processes: capitalist crisis, socio-economic inequality,
political instability, post-traditionalist and postcolonial transformation. The mobilisation
of anxieties and resentments about the political activities of racialised minorities in urban
working-class areas played a key role in fusing these different ‘crisis construals’
(Sum/Jessop 2013: 395-439) into the notion of one single crisis of national identity. Such
a crisis-analytical framework is also important to make sense of the dynamics of minority,
anti-racist and anti-fascist political action. Here as well, there have been ongoing debates
about the specific role of racism as a form of displacing socio-economic crisis tendencies,
discrediting progressive political opposition, and revitalising traditionalist and
supremacist attitudes in the postcolonial age. The first task, then, was to develop a
theoretical and methodological framework in order to situate the concrete struggles over
incidents of deadly violence into this broader socio-historical constellation. Having
identified in the existing literature a tendency to bifurcate between traditional materialist
and neo-idealist theoretical approaches that run the risk of reductionist cul-de-sacs, I
suggested moving in the direction of a critical-materialist approach that takes into account
the dialectical relation between material living conditions and their complex ideational
representations. Bringing together a range of authors that have contributed to the
development of such a critical materialist approach, I developed a more systematic
analytical framework that allows to bridge the gap between individual cases on the one
hand and their socio-historical conditions and repercussions on the other. Against this
background, I conducted a case-based analysis of the long-term cycle of political

225
struggles over racism and violence between the early 1950s and the late 1990s. It is not
my intention here to provide an in-depth summary of all the complex developments which
have been explored in chapters 4-7. Instead, I will draw out the larger contribution of the
thesis by reflecting upon the overarching socio-political conditions and socio-historical
trajectories by which these struggles had been characterised.

My first empirical chapter analysed the everyday and political culture of racist
hostility and violence in the 1950s and 1960s through the prism of the political conflicts
in the wake of the racist riots in 1958 and the murder of Kelso Cochrane in Notting Hill
in 1959. In contrast to conventional periodisations that emphasise moments of consensus
and integration, this period was characterised by a toxic atmosphere of racist hostility and
violence. Both small-scale attacks and large-scale riots had become a recurrent
occurrence as early as the late 1940s and early 1950s – compounded by a mainstream
culture of indifference and complicity. The riots and the murder of Kelso Cochrane were
not only a culmination point in this racist spiral of escalation but also a moment in which
racist violence received major public attention for the first time. In retrospect, it was in
this moment that the key parameters of the public debate about racism and violence of
the following decades were established. On the one hand, it was the first time that small
groups of politically unorganised racists and organised neo-fascists managed to trigger a
crisis of legitimacy and impose their agenda at the highest level of mainstream politics
and state policy. While their acts of violence were condemned, their calls for racist
immigration restrictions were taken up by both Conservative and Labour governments in
the 1960s. On the other hand, a growing number of social-democratic and left-liberal
politicians and commentators initiated the long-term process of establishing a legal and
institutional anti-discrimination framework. Compared to the severity of the problem of
racism, however, these initiatives remained rudimentary at best. In light of these political
responses, then, it is difficult to sustain the conventional assumption that racism was not
prevalent during the “post-war settlement”. While this assumption is gradually eroding, I
argued that a multi-dimensional explanatory framework is required in order to make sense
of this climate of racism. On the one hand, the immediate outbreaks of racist violence
suggest that the longstanding every day and political culture of nationalist and imperialist
pride directly manifested itself in the form of aggressions against those who were
identified with what was considered to be the “shameful” decline of the British Empire.
On the other hand, these aggressions were also a way of responding, in repressed and
displaced form, to structural problems in contemporary British society. Most notably, the

226
fact that the “affluent society” was still characterised by deep-seated inequalities and
showed signs of erosion at the turn of the decade was articulated in the form of racialised
“slum” discourses. It was in this context that a distinct configuration of minority, anti-
racist and anti-fascist political actors emerged. While there is a tendency in the literature
to highlight the predominance of integrationist political approaches, I demonstrated that
there had already been controversies regarding questions of state critique and practical
self-defence. This suggests that there was scepticism not only about the racialised
selectivities of the hegemonic public terrain, but also about a strategic approach that
restricts itself to containing the violent symptoms of racism, without tackling its social
and political conditions.

In the second empirical chapter, I retraced how these conflict dynamics changed
between the late 1960s and mid-1970s, focusing on the political struggles in the aftermath
of the racist murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in Southall in 1976. This period saw not
only continued initiatives by both Conservative and Labour governments to intensify
racist immigration controls on the pretext of avoiding further “race riots”, but also the
strengthening of Powellite counter-hegemonic forces within the Conservative Party as
well as a brief moment of neo-fascist popular and electoral success. The only official
initiative to contain this atmosphere of racism came from the social-democratic
hegemony project with its implementation of another Race Relations Act in 1976. Its
impact on tackling and preventing racist attacks, however, remained limited. The broader
context within which these developments took place was characterised by two central
developments: first, an intensification of economic crisis tendencies with dramatic social
repercussions since the early 1970s; and second, the growing influence of counter- and
anti-hegemonic political forces that challenged the dominance of authoritarian and
traditionalist British values. The political struggles over the murder of Chaggar became a
catalytic moment in this wider constellation. The activist responses suggest that there was
a clear awareness of the severity of racist hostility and violence in the 1970s. Particularly
relevant was the emergence of the Asian Youth Movements which not only became an
important moment of nation-wide campaigning but also provided new impulses for
autonomous approaches. But there was a much broader set of minority, anti-racist, and
anti-fascist actors that got involved in these struggles, thus continuing debates about
appropriate political and strategic responses. In hegemonic political discourse, there was
a strong tendency to interpret these protest dynamics in terms of “race conflicts”. Most
strikingly, direct comparisons were made with the 1958 racist riots, thus discrediting anti-

227
racist protest as just another form of racist perpetration. Moving from a descriptive to an
explanatory perspective, I characterised these responses as attempts to connect conformist
anxieties about political destabilisation in the present with resentments about the decline
of the British Empire in the past. Furthermore, I identified clear attempts to imagine these
protest dynamics as symbols of the pathologies of “inner city” life (although this led to
some difficulties for those who operated with colonial stereotypes about Asian
“conformism” and “traditionalism”). This “inner city” discourse did not have to be
invented as it could directly draw on the previous “slum” discourse. What has changed,
however, was its scope and intensity: the imagined spaces of “race conflict” became
larger and more threatening.

The third empirical chapter dealt with the ‘turbulent decade’ (Bowling 1998: 58)
between the late 1970s and late 1980s that was characterised by complex trajectories that
not only led to the intensification of racist violence and hostility, but in this desperate
moment also paved the way for significant changes in the area of mainstreaming and
institutionalising the fight against racism. The rise of Thatcherism and the accompanying
shift of the broader political landscape to the right further intensified the experiences of
hardship, repression, and violence particularly for the working-class segments of Black
and Asian communities. This included not only the ongoing pattern of racist and neo-
fascist attacks, but also the intensified and expanded use of police repression in multi-
racialised urban working-class areas. The widespread use of the “no-go area” image,
which had previously been used in the context of armed conflicts in Northern Ireland and
South Africa, not only represented a massive increase in alarmism, but also helped to
erase the socio-economic and political causes of these confrontations by re-imagining
them as the latest episode in a centuries-old fight between the “British nation” and its
enemies. It was also in this period that first signs of a class-specific bifurcation of racism
could be observed, with the increasing acknowledgement of economically affluent and
politically conformist segments of Black and Asian communities. However, this
integrationist approach remained rudimentary. Much more significant were the changing
relations of forces within the social democratic hegemony project. While the Labour Party
leadership remained hesitant to directly confront the political climate of racism, there was
a growing number of Black, Asian, Jewish, and white left-wing Labour politicians who
entered the municipal and parliamentary stage and began to establish stronger links with
minority, anti-racist and anti-fascist oppositional actors. The political conflicts over the
New Cross case in 1981 as well as the cases of Cherry Groce and Cynthia Jarrett were at

228
the centre of these broader political developments. For racialised minority communities,
they became symbols not only of the lack of police protection against racist and neo-
fascist attacks, but also of the growing threats coming from the police itself. The
application of the “no-go area” stigma to Broadwater Farm, the accompanying use of
massive police repression and the mistrial of Winston Silcott, Engin Raghip and Mark
Braithwaite – all these developments were perceived by many local activists as a
historical low point. In contrast to many authoritative studies of the mid-1980s, those
cases led not only to urban unrest but also to remarkable moments of large-scale public
mobilisation and campaigning. Furthermore, it was in response to these cases that
concerted attempts were made to overcome the previous bifurcation between
mobilisational and institutional approaches. This included not only attempts by bereaved
families and support actors to politicise the court room, but also attempts by local
councillors to amplify the concerns of community-based activists. Haringey Council’s
establishment of an independent inquiry into the circumstances of the Broadwater Farm
unrest was one of the results of this growing movement in the direction of a ‘transitional’
(Shukra et al. 2004) type of politics located at the intersection of community activism and
local government.

The fourth empirical chapter offered a re-examination of the juridical-political

conflicts over the Lawrence case in light of these broader historical trajectories, in
particular since the early 1980s. In contrast to authoritative accounts of the Lawrence case
that overstate either the moments of continuity or change, I showed that a more detailed
analysis of the changing political relations of forces leads to a more nuanced picture of
the contradictions and ambivalences at the centre of the “Macpherson moment”. Looking
at both the periods of Thatcherism after Thatcher (1990-97) and New Labour (after 1997),
I identified a shift in the direction of a post-crisis discourse that still strongly drew on the
spectre of “race conflicts” in the “inner city”, but increasingly moved in the direction of
promising a bright future where the grievances and confrontations of the 1970s and 1980s
would be forgotten. In this context, the racialised “inner city” discourse became more
confined and less sensationalist, with the latter being increasingly portrayed as an
anachronistic remnant from the past. Despite striking similarities, especially in the area
of immigration control and law-and-order, there were also various differences between
the Conservative and Labour leaderships of the 1990s: While political opposition to
racism was identified by the former as one of the main reasons why Britain had not yet
overcome its “crisis”, it was appreciated by the latter as an important driving force on the

229
path to economic recovery and political stability. However, New Labour’s notion of anti-
racism was highly ambivalent, as seen, for example, in the advocacy of anti-
discrimination on British territory on the one hand and the defence of a discriminatory
border regime on the other. Nonetheless, its growing responsiveness to the above-
mentioned group of left-wing, anti-racist Labour politics was a key precondition for the
“Macpherson moment”. The Stephen Lawrence case echoed many of these ambivalent
developments in the post-Thatcherite transition period. On the one hand, it became a
symbol for the unchanged climate of racist violence on British streets and racist hostility
within British authorities. Furthermore, it revealed that minority, anti-racist and anti-
fascist oppositional political forces were still confronted with the stigma of “race
conflicts” which continued to dominate news coverage about large-scale street protests.
The political and media representation of the Lawrence case itself showed that there was
a growing willingness to express sympathies with the victims of racist violence – but only
on the condition that they could be dissociated from the ongoing discourse about
“lawlessness”, “disorder” and “militancy” in the “inner city”. For many activists, then,
the situation was still so severe that a fight on all fronts was considered necessary: While
the Lawrence family was the main driving force in the institutional struggles for truth and
justice, there was a much broader range of actors that sought to intervene at different
points. Similar to previous decades, these struggles were characterised by strategic and
political conflicts. Throughout the 1990s, however, this did not lead to an atmosphere of
fragmentation and resignation. As the Unity March in 1993 and the formation of the
National Civil Rights Movement in 1999 demonstrate, there was an ongoing need to
establish large-scale protest campaigns. What is more, my archival research has revealed
that the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry itself became an important terrain for collective
political interventions. It is not an exaggeration to say that the entire field of minority,
anti-racist and anti-fascist political actors which had emerged since the 1950s considered
the public inquiry an unprecedented window of opportunity. At the same time,
demonstrating a remarkable degree of reflexivity and foresight, many actors voiced their
concerns not only about the institutional selectivities of the inquiry, but also about the
limitations of its reform agenda – in particular its reluctance to discuss institutional racism
as a matter of disciplinary and criminal action, and its failure to tackle the social and
political root causes of racism. The past two decades have demonstrated that these
warnings have come true. The sheer number of racist murder cases and deaths in state
custody which have led to accusations of racism since 1999 demonstrates that

230
Macpherson’s promise of ‘catharsis’ (Macpherson 1999: 3.12) turned out to be a pious
hope. 119

My project ends with the Macpherson report but makes clear the value of applying
its framework to the most recent few decades. For pragmatic reasons, I have not been able
to stretch the time frame further into the present. For future research projects, however,
such an examination of the post-Macpherson period would be valuable for various
reasons. First, it would allow to explore the long-term dimension of the family campaigns
and juridical-political struggles that I have engaged with in this thesis. It is not an
exaggeration to say that an engagement with the developments and struggles over the
Lawrence case in the past two decades would be worth another full PhD project. From
the change of the double jeopardy law in 2003 to the re-opening of the police investigation
in 2006, the conviction for murder of two of the original suspects in 2012, and the ongoing
“Undercover Policing Inquiry” which was established in in 2015, the Lawrence case has
become an integral element of contemporary British politics. Neville and Doreen
Lawrence have become leading figures in the struggle for racial justice and police
accountability, and have received multiple honours, including OBEs and, in the case of
Doreen Lawrence, peerage. But this long-term dimension can also be found in the context
of many other cases. In 2004, following repeated requests by the New Cross Massacre
Campaign, the High Court agreed to initiate a second inquest into the deaths of the
thirteen teenagers. However, the result of the inquest held between 23 February and 7
May 2004 was identical to the first one. The coroner ruled out the possibility that the fire
had been the result of an arson attack and suggested that it was probably started by one
of the party guests. In the end, however, he claimed to be unable to determine the cause
of the fire and returned an open verdict (Andrews 2021: 203; Guardian 07/05/04; GPIA
n.d.). In 2006, the BBC produced a documentary in cooperation with Stanley Cochrane
who visited the UK for the first time to find out who killed his brother in 1959. Amongst
other things, the documentary revealed that there were only limited possibilities to re-
open the case in light of new forensic technology because Cochrane’s clothes had been
destroyed by the police less than ten years after the murder (Silver 2006). It was only in
May 2021 that the Metropolitan Police announced they would the murder case (Daily
Mirror 30/05/21). In 2011, Cherry Groce died of kidney failure at the age of 63. During
the subsequent inquest in June and July 2014, the examining pathologist reported that the

119
See the review of empirical evidence at the very beginning of this thesis.

231
cause of her death directly goes back to the injuries inflicted by the police officer who
shot and permanently paralysed her in 1985. The inquest jury concluded that ‘her
subsequent death was contributed to by failures in the planning and implementation of
the raid’ (cited in Guardian 10/07/14). In a public statement, the Groce family said that

It is now a matter of public record that the shooting of our mother and grandmother
was not an accident but instead a result of astonishing failures by officers across the
ranks to follow procedures designed to protect innocent members of the public. […]
This inquest has been the first opportunity to hear evidence relating to the armed raid
which led to our mother’s shooting. For 29 years we have battled for justice and
fought for truth. (cited in INQUEST 2014)

Another key aspect of the long-term dimension of these struggles is the politics of
memory which has not been examined in great detail in this thesis (see Andrews 2021).
From the very beginning, most of the family justice campaigns have been involved in the
organisation and institutionalisation of practices of commemoration. The New Cross
Massacre Action Committee established a New Cross Memorial Trust as early as 1981
(GPIA NCM/3/2/4). In the following decades various memorials were erected in London,
including at Lewisham Townhall, at St Andrew’s United Reform Church, at Fordham
Park as well as the crime scene in New Cross Road (Andrews 2021: 183; GPIA n.d.). In
2006, the Mayor of Lewisham and the New Cross Fire Parents Committee initiated the
New Cross Fire Award to support young people seeking to study at Goldsmith’s,
University of London (Andrews 2021: 202). Doreen Lawrence founded the Stephen
Lawrence Charitable Trust in 1998 and the Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation in 2019,
with the latter campaigning for an annual day of commemorating and celebrating Stephen
Lawrence’s life and legacy and to ‘inspire a more equal, inclusive society, and to foster
opportunities for marginalised young people in the UK’ (Stephen Lawrence Day
Foundation 2020). In 2016, the Groce family established the Cherry Groce Foundation
which aims to ‘[h]onour Cherry Groce so as to ensure that our future will learn from the
past’, ‘[b]uild communities through the pursuit of justice’, and ‘[w]ork at the root cause
to prevent miscarriages of justice’ (Cherry Groce Foundation 2019). In April 2021, the
Foundation unveiled the Cherry Groce Memorial in central Brixton (Amlak-Sakhu 2021).
In 2019, an initiative of local individuals and organisations, including the Monitoring
Group, organised the public campaign “Southall Resistance 40” in order to commemorate
the events surrounding the deaths of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in 1976 and Blair Peach in
1979 (TMG 2021c). It would be illuminating to further explore such commemorative

232
projects and their attempts to break through the hegemonic political culture of
indifference and forgetting. Second, such an inclusion of the contemporary period would
allow to examine how those long-term campaigns interacted with those numerous
campaigns that have emerged over the past two decades. As was discussed in the
introduction, there is a small field of critical research that has contributed to the analysis
of more recent cases, such as the case of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old British Black man,
who was fatally shot by an armed officer during an interception of the cab in which he
was sitting in Tottenham in 2011 (Elliot-Cooper 2017; Newburn 2015; Solomos 2011);
or the case of Sheku Bayoh, a 31-years-old British Black man who died from asphyxiation
while being detained by up to nine police officers in 2015 in Kirkcaldy (Akhtar 2019). It
is high time that more research is dedicated to many more cases of deadly violence that
over the past years have led to accusations of state, political and popular racism. Third,
such an analysis of the long-term dimension of historical cases as well as of contemporary
cases allows engaging further with the broader socio-historical questions that have been
discussed in this thesis. One aspect that would have to be considered in this context is the
resurgence of Powellite and Thatcherite political forces in the wake of the global crisis of
capitalism in 2007/8, the fiscal crisis of the European Union in 2009/10, the “long summer
of migration” in 2015, and the Brexit debacle since 2016 – a development which has put
even the limited achievements of the “Macpherson moment” at risk (see
Virdee/McGeever 2018).

Overall, then, there is still a broad range of unanswered questions. If academic

research wants to contribute to practically overcoming existing relations of domination,
persecution and violence, more expertise and resources need to be dedicated to the critical
analysis of the conditions under which these relations become possible as well as the
conditions under which they can be made impossible. Unfortunately, there continues to
be a lack of such critical research projects. I hope that this thesis makes a small
contribution to countering this tendency.

233
Appendix I
Selection of Cases for In-Depth Analysis
1. Step:
Based on an examination of archival documents and secondary literature, I collected cases
of deadly violence (perpetrated by both state and non-state actors) that have led to the
formation of protest and justice campaigns in the selected time period. I found the
following 39 cases:

a) Death in state custody

Michael Ferreira (1978)
Winston Rose (1981)
Colin Roach (1983)
Dorothy “Cherry” Groce (1985)
Paul Ducatt (1986)
Oliver Pryce (1990)
Joy Gardner (1993)
Leon Patterson (1992)
Oluwashiji Lapite (1994)
Norman Manning (1994)
Brian Douglas (1995)
Wayne Douglas (1995)
Ibrahima Sey (1996)
Christopher Alder (1998)
David Bennett (1998)
Roger Sylvester (1999)
Harry Stanley (1999)

b) Death following attack

Kelso Cochrane (1959)
Tosir Ali (1970)
Gurdip Singh Chaggar (1976)
Altab Ali (1978)
Akhtar Ali Baig (1980)

234
Parveen, Aqsa, Kamran and Imran Khan (1981)
The fourteen victims of New Cross fire (1981)
Eustace Pryce (1984)
Ahmed Iqbal Ullah (1985)
Kuldip Singh Sekhon (1988)
Ahmed Shek (1989)
Tahir Akram (1990)
Tasleem Akhtar (1990)
Rolan Adams (1991)
Rohit Duggal (1992)
Mohammed Sarwar (1992)
Siddik Dada (1992)
Stephen Lawrence (1993)
Lahkvinder ‘Ricky’ Reel (1997)
Michael Menson (1997)
Surjit Singh Chhokar (1998)
Jay Abatan (1999)

2. Step:
Based on a structural analysis of media and parliamentary discourse, I selected those cases
that have attracted a certain extent of mainstream public attention. More precisely, I have
decided to select those cases which a) have become the subject of at least one article in
each of the four analysed newspapers and of at least 20 articles across these newspapers;
and b) have been mentioned at least once in parliamentary debates (both within 12 months
of the incident itself or, if applicable, the subsequent police investigations and criminal
proceedings). Those cases that did not fit this criterion were analysed as part of the
contextual analysis. This has led me to select the following 13 cases:

a) Death in state custody

Winston Rose (1981)
Colin Roach (1983)
Dorothy “Cherry” Groce (1985)

235
Cynthia Jarrett (1985)
Wayne Douglas (1995)

b) Death following attack

Kelso Cochrane (1959)
Gurdip Singh Chaggar (1976)
The fourteen victims of New Cross fire (1981)
Ahmed Iqbal Ullah (1985)
Stephen Lawrence (1993)
Oluwashiji Lapite (1994)
Lahkvinder ‘Ricky’ Reel (1997)
Michael Menson (1997)

3. Step:
Taking into account further research priorities outlined in section 3.3.2, I eventually
selected the following 6 cases:

a) Death in state custody

Dorothy “Cherry” Groce (1985)
Cynthia Jarrett (1985)

b) Death following attack:

Kelso Cochrane (1959)
Gurdip Singh Chaggar (1976)
The fourteen victims of the New Cross Fire (1981)
Stephen Lawrence (1993)

236
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Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2020c): Unemployment rate (aged 16 and over,
seasonally adjusted). Online:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemploy
ment/timeseries/mgsx/lms
Olden, M. (2011): Murder in Notting Hill. Zero Books.
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The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 1970s Britain. London: Hutchinson,
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Brunswick/London: Transaction Publishers
Pemberton, S. (2008): Demystifying Deaths in Police Custody: Challenging State Talk.
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Peplow, S. (2019): Race and Riots in Thatcher’s Britain. Manchester: Manchester
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254
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Rowe, M. (1998): The Racialisation of Disorder in 20th Century Britain. Aldershot:
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Rowe, M. (2007): Policing beyond Macpherson: issues in policing, race and society.
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Schofield, C./Jones, B. (2019): “Whatever Community Is, This Is Not It”: NottingHill
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the Defence of Organizational Ego. British Journal of Criminology 50 (5), 935-
953
Shukra, K. (1998): The Changing Pattern of Black Politics in Britain. London [etc.]:
Pluto Press.
Shukra, Kalbir/Back, Les/Khan, Azra/Keith, Michael/Solomos, John (2004): Black
Politics and the Web of Joined-up Governance: compromise, ethnic minority
mobilization and the transitional public sphere. Social Movement Studies 3 (1),
31-50.
Sian, K. (2019): Navigating Institutional Racism in British Universities. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
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my-brother/
Sivanandan, A. (1981): Preface. In: Campaign against Racism and Fascism: Southall: The
Birth of a Black Community. London: Institute of Race Relations.
Sivanandan, A. (1987): Introduction. In: IRR (1987): Policing against Black People.
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Sivanandan, A. (2008a): Introduction: Unity in Struggle. In: A. Sivanandan: Catching
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xiii-xix.
Sivanandan, A. (2008b): From resistance to rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean
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Culture and Globalisation. London/New York: Verso, 90-139.
Small, S./Solomos, J. (2006): Race, Immigration and Politics in Britain: Changing Policy
Agendas and Conceptual Paradigms 1940s–2000s. In: International Journal of
Comparative Sociology, 235-257.
Smith, D. E. (1977): Feminism and Marxism: A Place to Begin, A Way to Go. Vancouver:
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Northeastern University Press.
Solomos, J. (1988): Black Youth, Racism and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge
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Solomos, J. (1993): Race and Racism in Britain, 2nd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.

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Solomos, J. (2003): Race and Racism in Britain, 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave
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capitalism and race: the experience of the seventies. In: CCCS (1982) (ed.): The
Empire Strikes Back – Race and Racism in 70s Britain. London/New York:
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Post-war Britain. London/New York: Verso.
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Policing and Society 24 (1), 1-21.
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southall-resistance-40
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Studies 12 (1), 1-34.
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sector
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consolidation. Sociological Review 67 (1), 3-27.
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(10), 1802-1819.
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University Cultures. Online:
https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/Media_772919_smxx.pdf
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Duke University Press.
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Policing. London: Inquest.
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Windus.
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Research Online 4 (1), 115-121.

260
Archival Documents 121
I. On-Site Archives
The Bernie Grant Archive (BGA)
BGA BG/P/12/5/2: Personal Correspondence (Personal Papers)

Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre (AIURRRC)

AIURRRC GB3228.8/7: Racism and anti-racism (Story of Manchester’s BME
Communities).

Black Cultural Archives (BCA)

BCA RC/RF/16/09/K: New Cross Fire (Runnymede Trust Research Files collection)

Central Library Birmingham (CLB)

CLB MS 2141/C/10: Joint Committee Against Racialism (Papers of the Indian Workers
Association).
CLB MS 2142/A/1/4/2: Records of the Indian Workers’ Association – Reports (Papers
of the Indian Workers Association).

George Padmore Institute Archives (GPIA)

EAC/04/02/07/01: Kuldip Sekhon Family Support Group (European Action for Racial
Equality and Social Justice, 1980s-1990s)
LRA/01/150: Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign (Personal Papers of John La Rose,
1940s-2010s).
NCM/1/1: New Cross Massacre Action Committee (New Cross Massacre Campaign,
1980-1985).
NCM 1/2/1/1: Organisation for New Cross / Black People’s Day of Action (New Cross
Massacre Campaign, 1980-1985).
NCM/1/2/2/1/1: Declaration of New Cross publication (New Cross Massacre Campaign,
1980-1985).
NCM 1/2/4/1: Response from Parliament, 23 Feb-10 Mar 1981 (New Cross Massacre
Campaign, 1980-1985).

121
All online sources have been last accessed on 30 March 2022. I have consulted and complied with the
copyright/intellectual property regulations set out by each of the following archives and services.

261
NCM 1/3/2: Press statements and press releases (New Cross Massacre Campaign, 1980-
1985).
NCM 2/4/1/1: Correspondence between John La Rose, Chairman of the New Cross
Massacre Action Committee, and those invited to participate as Commissioners at
the International Commission of Inquiry (New Cross Massacre Campaign, 1980-
1985).
NCM/3/2/4: The New Cross 1981 Memorial Trust ((New Cross Massacre Campaign,
1980-1985).

Institute of Race Relations Black History Collection (IRR BHC)

01/04/04/01/10/01/04: Justice for the Pryces Support Committee (Policing and racial
violence).
01/04/04/01/10/01/06: Other racial violence campaigns (Policing and racial violence).
01/04/04/01/10/07: Defence campaigns and police harassment (Policing and racial
violence).
01/04/04/01/10/08: Racial violence (Policing and racial violence).
01/04/04/01/10/08/17: Liberation, Bulletin of the Asian Youth Movement, 1981 (Policing
and racial violence).
01/04/04/01/12/048: Poster: ‘Remember Kuldip Sekhon’ (Southall).
01/04/04/01/14/16: Broadwater Farm, Tottenham, London Borough of Haringey, 1985
(Uprisings).

London Metropolitan Archives (LMA)

4463/B/08/01/001: New Cross Massacre Action Committee – Minutes and Notes
(Personal records of Eric and Jessica Huntley).
4463/B/08/01/002: New Cross Massacre Action Committee – Minutes, press releases and
notebook: “New X MAC Ealing Group 21/9/81”( Personal records of Eric and
Jessica Huntley).
4463/B/08/01/007: New Cross Massacre Action Committee – Owen Wesley Thompson
and others: Coroner's statement regarding application for judicial review by
parents (Personal records of Eric and Jessica Huntley).

National Archives (TNA)

262
DPP 2/4078: DUKES, Paul; CHANT, Graham; RAINBIRD, Colin; HUGHES, Hugh;
SPARKS, Malcolm; and GORDON, Alex (all members of National Socialist
Movement, Woodford group): arson (of synagogues in East London): main file,
1965-1966 (Director of Public Prosecutions: Case Papers, New Series).
HO 287/2992: New Cross fire (also known as the Deptford fire), 18 January 1981:
investigation and inquiry (Home Office: Police (POL Symbol Series) Files) (opened
2017).
HO 287/3776: The Shooting of Cherry Groce and the Brixton Riots (Home Office: Police
(POL Symbol Series) Files) (opened 2019).
HO 325/8: Racial disturbance: Nottingham, 1958 (Home Office: Queen's Peace (QPE
Symbol Series) Files).
HO 325/9: Racial disturbance: Notting Hill activities of extremist organisations;
deputation of MPs to the Secretary of State, 1959-1961 (Home Office: Queen's
Peace (QPE Symbol Series) Files).
HO 325/712: ‘Broadwater Farm riot in Tottenham, 6 October 1985: police report to
Harringay Police Community Consultative Group’ (Home Office: Queen's Peace
(QPE Symbol Series) Files) (opened 2016).
NT 1/2: Crown Prosecution Service: The Race of Equality; a guide for Crown
Prosecution Service staff on race, culture and religion (Inquiry into the Matters
Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/4: Afro-Caribbean and Asian Forum: Conference Report on Racial Attacks and
Harassment; 2nd Annual Report of the Nottingham Common Monitoring System,
April 1998 (Inquiry into the Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence:
Records).
NT 1/5: Anti Nazi League: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising from the Death
of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/25: Black Women for Wages for Housework and Legal Action for Women:
submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence:
Records).
NT 1/37: Christian Fisher: submission on behalf of Mr and Mrs Reel (Inquiry into the
Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/40: Commission for Racial Equality: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising
from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).

263
NT 1/41: Crown Prosecution Service: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising from
the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/42: Crown Prosecution Service: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising from
the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/43: Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology: University of Birmingham;
submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence:
Records).
NT 1/49: Dr Robin Oakley, Training and Research Consultant: Meaning of Institutional
Racism and Police Training on Racially Motivated Incidents (Inquiry into the
Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/67: Home Office: Police Policy Directorate; submission (Inquiry into the Matters
Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/68: INQUEST (United Campaigns for Justice): submission (Inquiry into the Matters
Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/70: Joy Gardner Memorial Campaign: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising
from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/79: Liberty: Independent Investigation of Police Complaints (Inquiry into the
Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/83: London Group of Labour MP's: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising
from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/106: National Assembly Against Racism: submission (Inquiry into the Matters
Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/107: National Association of Probation Officers: submission (Inquiry into the
Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/111: Newham Monitoring Project and The Monitoring Group: recommendations;
Time for Change (Inquiry into the Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen
Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/114: Pan African Caribbean Community Organisation: submission (Inquiry into
the Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/116: Police Complaints Authority: Informant Working Group Report; Developing
Informant Risk Assessment to Reflect Community Concerns (Inquiry into the
Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/118: Police Complaints Authority: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising
from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).

264
NT 1/117: Poale Zion Labour Zionist Movement: submission (Inquiry into the Matters
Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/123: Professor Gus John: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising from the
Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/125: Race Equality Councils: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising from the
Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/133: Searchlight Information Services: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising
from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/140: The 1990 Trust: Addendum to the 1990 Trust Submission to the Lawrence
Inquiry on Police Training (Inquiry into the Matters Arising from the Death of
Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/142: The Board of Deputies of British Jews: submission (Inquiry into the Matters
Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/149: The Institute of Race Relations: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising
from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/154: The Runnymede Trust: submissions (Inquiry into the Matters Arising from the
Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/155: The Society of Black Lawyers: submissions (Inquiry into the Matters Arising
from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/160: Bristol Trades Union Council: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising
from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/162: Union of Muslim Organisations of UK and Eire: submission (Inquiry into the
Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/164: UNISON: Harassment: A Guide to Policy and Representation (Inquiry into
the Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/167: University of Cambridge: Institute of Criminology; Violent Racism (Inquiry
into the Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/168: University of East London: Department of Sociology; Eternal Vigilance
(Inquiry into the Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/171: West Indian Standing Conference: submission (Inquiry into the Matters
Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).
NT 1/176: Metropolitan Police Service: submission (Inquiry into the Matters Arising
from the Death of Stephen Lawrence: Records).

265
Race Today (via National Library of Scotland)
(07+08/78a): Editorial: The black political strike, p.99
(07+08/78b): Forward to a command council, p.104.
(09+10/78): Charting the Asian self-defence movement, p.128-31.
(05+06/79): Southall: what is to be done, p.52-54.

Searchlight Magazine (via National Library of Scotland)

(1977a): Racists Plot to Escalate Bomb War, Searchlight Nr. 23, p.3.
(1977b): NF extends attack on muslems [sic], Searchlight Nr. 23, p.13.
(1977c): Time to call a halt to fascist terror tactics, p.8
(06/78): Ten weeks of racist violence, p.10-12.
(12/78): Armed violence: Webster’s threat, p.5-6.
(01/79): Jewish organisations cool attack on ANL, p.7.
(03/79): Widespread attacks on Asian shops, p.7.
(05/79): Tory right wing re-organises: anti-semitic comments by leading members, p.8-
9.
(11/79): Bookshop still target for Nazi attacks, p.17.
(11/80): Racial violence and the media, CARF section, p.16.
(09/81): The death of Winston Rose, by M. Howell and S. Bhatia, CARF section, p.19.
(05/82): Violence in London’s estates: Vietnamese victims of racism, p. 12.
(01/83): Tension on the Farm, CARF section, p.15.
(03/83): The death of Colin Roach, CARF section, p.18-19.
(06/83): Anti-Vietnamese violence escalates on South London estate, p.17.
(11/86): Intimidatory raids on Black centres, CARF section, p.16-17.
(03/90): Moslems under fire, by CARF, p. 19.
(04/90): BNP Nazis invade London, p.10-11.
(10/90a): Time to fight, p.3-4.
(10/90b): SMG under attack, by CARF, p.19
(03/91): British muslims, p.3.
(10/91): No title, p.20.
(11/91): Get tough with gypsies Labour councillor says, p. 13.
(12/91a): Editorial, p.2.
(12/91b): Daily Star stokes gypsy hate, p. 13.
(02/92): Gypsy race hate threat, p. 16.

266
(05/92): Fighting for travellers’ rights, p.7.
(06/92): Two seriously injured in race attack, p.6.
(12/92): Nazi inspired killings continue in Britain, p.4-5.
(02/93): No title, p.24.
(04/93): Nazi terror comes to Britain, p. 3.
(06/93): Editorial, p.2.
(07/93): Major success for anti-fascist movement, p.24.
(08/93): Close Down the BNP HQ, p.24.
(10/93): Close Down the BNP HQ, p.24.
(08/95): Editorial, p.2.
(10/98): Editorial, p.2.

II. Online Archives

British Political Speech Archive (BPSA)

Blair, T. (1994): Leader's speech, Blackpool 1994. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=200
Blair, T. (1995): Leader's speech, Brighton 1995. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=201
Blair, T. (1996): Leader's speech, Brighton 1996. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=202
Blair, T. (1997): Leader's speech, Brighton 1997. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=203
Kinnock, N. (1984): Leader's speech, Blackpool 1984. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=190
Kinnock, N. (1985): Leader's speech, Bournemouth 1985. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=191
Major, J. (1991): Leader's speech, 1991. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=137
Major, J. (1992): Leader's speech, Brighton 1992. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=138
Major, J. (1993): Leader's speech, Blackpool 1993. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=139

267
Major, J. (1994): Leader's speech, Bournemouth 1994. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=140
Major, J. (1995): Leader's speech, 1995. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=141
Major, J. (1996): Leader's speech, Bournemouth 1996. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=142
Thatcher, M. (1985): Leader’s Speech, Blackpool. Online:
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=131

Election Manifestos
Conservative Party (1951): General Election Manifesto. Online:
http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1951/1951-conservative-manifesto.shtml
Conservative Party (1955): General Election Manifesto. Online:
http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1955/1955-conservative-manifesto.shtml
Conservative Party (1959): General Election Manifesto. Online:
http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1959/1959-conservative-manifesto.shtml
Conservative Party (1992): General Election Manifesto. Online:
http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1992/1992-conservative-manifesto.shtml
Labour Party (1950): General Election Manifesto. Online: http://www.labour-
party.org.uk/manifestos/1950/1950-labour-manifesto.shtml
Labour Party (1951): General Election Manifesto. Online: http://www.labour-
party.org.uk/manifestos/1951/1951-labour-manifesto.shtml
Labour Party (1955): General Election Manifesto. Online: http://labour-
party.org.uk/manifestos/1955/1955-labour-manifesto.shtml
Labour Party (1959): General Election Manifesto. Online: http://www.labour-
party.org.uk/manifestos/1959/1959-labour-manifesto.shtml
Labour Party (1979): Labour General Election Manifesto 1979. Online:
http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1979/1979-labour-manifesto.shtml
Labour Party (1997): Labour General Election Manifesto 1979. Online:
http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1997/1997-labour-manifesto.shtml

Hansard – House of Common Debates (HC Deb)

268
(06/11/50): Housing. Vol. 480, 606-713. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1950-11-06/debates/13140985-10f1-
4849-8e42-d912dd939e8f/Housing
(28/03/56): Slum Clearance (Compensation) Bill. Vol. 550, 2161-2193. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1956-03-28/debates/552112e1-e396-
4e1a-899d-d99558aed77e/SlumClearance(Compensation)Bill
(18/03/57): Housing, London. Vol. 567, 49-136. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1957-03-18/debates/8c45808e-37a4-
4320-ac48-662e73dbd3c5/HousingLondon
(22/11/57): Housing, London (Immigrants). Vol. 578, 744-776. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1957-11-22/debates/45b90323-c9f4-
4298-a18e-436c902be2f9/HousingLondon(Immigrants)
(15/07/58): Rented Accommodation (Racial Discrimination). Vol. 591, 993-994.
Online: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1958-07-15/debates/194441e8-
c237-4c54-91d4-6e21abba6da3/RentedAccommodation(RacialDiscrimination)
(30/07/58): Dwelling Accommodation (Prostitution). Vol. 592, 1506-1518. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1958-07-30/debates/702e0a93-c4a0-
44ba-bf86-c0f1ba416f1d/DwellingAccommodation(Prostitution)
(05/12/58): Immigration (Control). Vol 596, 1552-1597. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1958-12-05/debates/3503a63c-8505-
452c-97c7-5083467b31b1/Immigration(Control)
(04/06/59): Racial Discrimination. Vol. 606, 368-72. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1959-06-04/debates/aa7c7a3a-39bc-
431b-b966-e7d4a65d78d8/RacialDiscrimination
(05/11/59): Immigration. Vol. 612, 1199-1201. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1959-11-05/debates/edfeb53a-8a31-4fd8-
a27b-2d7444f45d6a/ImmigrationControl
(07/12/59): Racial Intolerance And Discrimination. Vol. 615, 107-178. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1959-06-04/debates/aa7c7a3a-39bc-
431b-b966-e7d4a65d78d8/RacialDiscrimination
(23/02/60): Disturbances, Notting Hill (Sentences). Vol. 618, 331-40. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1960-02-23/debates/a1fae625-7e52-46f4-
aa0e-ef679d405032/DisturbancesNottingHill(Sentences)

269
(23/11/65): Schedule—(Acts Continued till End of December 1966), Volume 721, 262-
378. Online: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1965-11-
23/debates/93b96e02-88da-475e-8081-
efd8bbdec252/Schedule%E2%80%94(ActsContinuedTillEndOfDecember1966)
(17/05/76): Malawi (British Passport Holders). Volume 911, 964-974. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1976-05-17/debates/8117c3d5-76f7-
4182-9643-a7a32406e8e5/Malawi(BritishPassport Holders)
(20/05/76): Immigration. Vol. 911, 1688-1693. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1976-05-20/debates/f24c50a2-4ea0-
45c3-84af-fc0f97f33b61/Immigration
(24/05/76): Immigration and Emigration. Volume 912, 33-104. Available Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1976-05-24/debates/841c7ffa-e1ac-4771-
a5b8-e1ebd3aa6ee3/ImmigrationAndEmigration
(15/06/76): Lewisham. Vol. 913, 303-303. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1976-06-15/debates/fe2d0923-e3aa-
4442-a353-316f5b6e804e/Lewisham
(05/03/81): Law and Order. Volume 1000, 403-404. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1981-03-05/debates/8379b047-68fa-
4622-9df7-58b26e30b4f8/LawAndOrder
(10/03/81): Engagements. Volume 1000, 752-756. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1981-03-10/debates/a324ead9-bb16-
41b6-8cb7-f9f56e9d6ffe/Engagements
(21/10/85): Inner City Disorders. Volume 85, 30-46. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1985-10-21/debates/9faba14d-3a31-
469c-98fc-6342b09cee8c/InnerCityDisorders?
(02/02/89): Metropolitan Police (Racism Claims). Vol. 146, 419-20. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1989-02-02/debates/729bc1ee-bdc5-
44a3-879b-7f6d2ac4c575/MetropolitanPolice(RacismClaims)
(08/05/90): Schools (Ethnic Composition). Vol. 172, 13. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1990-05-08/debates/5e30a8ad-b4c5-
45a4-8836-c1cb58f69749/Schools(EthnicComposition)
(17/12/90): Race Relations. Vol. 183, 20. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1990-12-17/debates/97a31231-1422-
4955-9187-a0ab53f3bb01/RaceRelations

270
(20/02/91): Racial Discrimination. Vol. 186, 326-341. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1991-02-20/debates/2be54933-db10-
4c94-a265-91fe744f94c8/RacialDiscrimination
(18/03/91): Anti-Semitic Literature. Vol. 188, 13-14. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1991-03-18/debates/52f04dff-8c7b-4311-
af48-e530da2f1f70/Anti-SemiticLiterature
(02/07/91): Asylum. Vol. 194, 165-178. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1991-07-02/debates/88f07629-bfc5-4a9a-
a734-5cb63e1e379b/Asylum
(18/10/91): Policing (London). Vol. 196, 538-610. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1991-10-18/debates/cdd85efd-81d9-
4969-a0f3-d494b389aad8/Policing(London)
(20/01/92): Racial Hatred. Vol. 202, 11-12. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1992-01-20/debates/8fa22747-2785-
4b6a-a8b0-5bfb671581c2/RacialHatred
(12/05/92): Environment, Local Government And Education. Vol. 507, 500-88. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1992-05-12/debates/69960709-e356-
47dc-a6ed-348b34515aaa/EnvironmentLocalGovernmentAndEducation
(14/05/92): 1 Amendment Of The Law. Vol. 207, 773-811. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1992-05-14/debates/7ba82b00-63a9-
4e2d-a785-d7b009fede92/1AmendmentOfTheLaw
(09/06/92): Ethnic Minorities. Vol. 209, 149-198. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1992-06-09/debates/eb4957ec-c021-
4cb6-90ad-6b80a1c7176f/EthnicMinorities
(09/12/92): Racial Violence. Vol. 215, 850-52. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1992-12-09/debates/771d2cea-cfa5-4bc9-
be69-59a46499679c/RacialViolence
(05/02/93): Caravan Sites (Amendment) Bill. Vol. 218, 587-651. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1993-02-05/debates/8e5f2906-0c0e-
4362-bc32-a6418138325a/CaravanSites(Amendment)Bill
(21/05/93): Racial Violence. Vol. 225, 541-552. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1993-05-21/debates/5433da52-1580-
4564-91fc-f5a5db99d919/RacialViolence

271
(11/03/94): Racial Hatred And Violence Bill. Vol. 239, 586-589. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1994-03-11/debates/274ac378-d57d-
4454-b5a0-8b2d1a1712ca/RacialHatredAndViolenceBill
(20/03/95): Racial Offences. Vol. 257, 13. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1995-03-20/debates/c363334a-826a-
4fc9-b281-b17bcd7738dc/RacialOffences
(20/04/95): Racial Attacks Group. Vol. 258, 327-328. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1995-04-20/debates/1203c78f-9a8c-
487c-a83c-6b6747cfa844/RacialAttacksGroup
(04/07/95): Black People (Deaths In Custody). Vol. 287-294. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1995-07-04/debates/6abf13b1-dcac-
4958-b60a-f5656b82c670/BlackPeople(DeathsInCustody)
(11/12/95): Asylum And Immigration Bill. Vol. 268, 699-804. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1995-12-11/debates/aa86b4a8-0e78-
4d53-abfa-dd1db3e13577/AsylumAndImmigrationBill
(16/02/96): Noise Bill. Vol. 271, 1243-1302. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1996-02-16/debates/ee0d5087-ff94-431e-
967f-6e37e8efacc7/NoiseBill?highlight=agitation#contribution-d52c1391-7221-
48f1-a911-a168823d919b
(18/03/96): Incitement To Racial Hatred. Vol. 274, 16. Online:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1996-03-18/debates/e35dcc8d-2c8f-
4588-afe3-cb573b989072/IncitementToRacialHatred

Hansard – House of Commons Early Day Motions (HC EDM)

(13/12/89): Racial Harassment and the Police. Online: https://edm.parliament.uk/early-
day-motion/1829

Margaret Thatcher Foundation (MTF)

Thatcher, M. (1978): TV Interview for Grenada World in Action. 27 January 1978.
Online: https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103485

John Enoch Powell Speech Archive (JEPSA)

John Enoch Powell Speech Archive (2018): Speeches. Online:
http://www.enochpowell.info/speeches/

272
Powell, E. (1970): Speech at Election Meeting, Birmingham 13 June 1970. Online:
http://enochpowell.info/wp-content/uploads/Speeches/May-June%201970.pdf

Campaign against Racism and Fascism (CARF) Online Archive

(02+03/91): From terrorist to barbarian: the face of anti-Arab racism, pp.7-8. Online:
https://irr.org.uk/app/uploads/2017/05/CARF-no.1.pdf
(04+05/91): Anti-Semite abroad/Anti-Arab at home, p4. Online:
https://irr.org.uk/app/uploads/2017/05/no.2.pdf
(07+08/91): Anti-Arab racism: Europe unites, p.6. Online:
https://irr.org.uk/app/uploads/2017/05/no.3.pdf
(11+12/92): Fascists court prosecution, p.11. Online:
https://irr.org.uk/app/uploads/2017/05/no.11.pdf
(03+04/93): Blood on the streets, p.3. Online:
https://irr.org.uk/app/uploads/2017/05/no.13.pdf
(08+09/95): Editorial, p.2. Online: https://irr.org.uk/app/uploads/2017/05/No.27.pdf
(04+05/01): National Civil Rights Movement Newsletter Issue 5, pp.6-10. Online:
https://irr.org.uk/app/uploads/2017/05/no.61.pdf

Newspaper Archives
The Daily Mail (via The Daily Mail Historical Archive) 122
(22/05/51): Crowded World Our Menace, p.5.
(17/01/55): Will it be a Dream or another Slum?, by G. Joyce, p.4.
(01/09/58): Midnight Riot in London, p.1.
(02/09/58): Should we let them keep pouring in?, by E. Edelman, p.4.
(03/09/58): This puts us all on trial, F. Huddleston, p.1.
(05/09/58): On our Conscience, p.1.
(30/03/59): Anti-negro Mr Jordan sets up a Notting Hill HQ, p.5.
(22/05/59: 7): Murder police seek woman, by A. Tietjen and A. Cook, p.1.
(23/05/59): Yard switch men to Notting Hill, by R. Hallworth, p.1.
(06/08/59): I know the murderer’s face, by J. Greenslade, p.5
(29/07/68): Troops mailed ghetto rifles, p.2.
(24/04/73): Life in the city of stress, by J. Stevenson, p.13.

122
All sources were accessed online via the service provider Gale Primary Sources which is also the
copyright holder (in conjunction with its licencors). See: https://www.gale.com/intl/primary-sources

273
(21/05/73): Urban crisis, p.9.
(12/06/73): The dangers of this cover-up, by E. Edelman, p.6.
(04/05/76): Four-star hotel home for Asians, p.1, 3.
(17/05/76): Fears grow as Asians fly in, by P. Cliff, p.1.
(24/05/76): The front-line families, by M. Stuart, p.6.
(25/05/76): Immigrants – How Britain is deceived, by A. Shrimsley, p. 1.
(02/06/76): Young and black – but what chance have they?, by J. Southworth, p.6.
(07/06/76a): Racial riot is quelled, by J. Harrison, p.1-2.
(07/06/76b): We don’t want revenge says family, p.2.
(07/06/76c): The lesson of Southall, p. 6.
(27/11/78): Doctors warn of no-go areas, p.18.
(11/09/79: 12): Wise moves, p.12.
(05/04/80): Defusing the flashpoints, p.6.
(19/01/81): Horror as the reggae party became an inferno, by T. Oliver, p.3.
(30/01/81): Left set to exploit party fire tragedy, by J. Passmore, p.11.
(25/01/81): Killer blaze: ‘charge soon’, by P. Burden, p.16.
(03/03/81): 6,000 blacks in protest march, by A. Kent, P. Burden and J. Passmore, p.1.
(09/03/81): Foot in mass murder row, by A. Bevins, T. Miles, J. Namshire, p.1-2.
(28/03/81): The overkill of St Paul’s, by S. Kennersley, p.7.
(14/05/81): 13 day that became a trial of the police, by Y. Roberts, p.9.
(06/07/81): Timetable of violence in the streets, p.2.
(10/07/81): Thugs scare of Dr Jean, p.8.
(30/09/85): Policeman's fear that led to a riot, p.2-3.
(08/10/85a): Police will get tough, by G. Greig and D. Williams, p.1-2.
(08/10/85b): Ambush…IRA style, by R. Kay, p.4.
(08/10/85c): ‘Burnt-out hulks litter this concrete jungle…despair hangs heavy’, by A.
Roy, p.6.
(09/10/85a): White victims of racial humbug, by L. Lee-Potter, p.7.
(09/10/85b): Please god…not him, by S. Barrett, p.12.
(12/10/85): 1,000 strikers say ‘Grant must go’, by S. Ryan, p. 10.
(12/11/85): 2,000 march in protest over police shooting, p.2.
(11/12/85): Unwanted Grant, p.2.
(14/12/85): ‘Raid son’ cleared, p.9.
(27/12/85): Bombs, bullets, blood in barricaded Britain, p.24-25.

274
(22/03/86): Woman whose shooting led to riot sees son get mercy, by M. Evans, p.15.
(26/04/91): Baker rejects ban on black power activist, by H. Austin, p.5.
(11/05/91): A walk on the wild side, by B. James, p.7.
(30/07/91): Mob drive out police in robbery rampage, by J. Woodcock, p.9.
(03/09/91): The softly path to these city riots, by S. Bailey, p.6.
(12/09/91): Firemen take cover as mobs go on the rampage, by R. Scott and J. Woodcock,
p.1-2.
(07/11/91): Hotel drug trap that snared a £2m Godfather, A. Loudon, p.12.
(09/01/93): Moss Side Story, D. Ehrlich, p.13.
(24/04/93): Murdered just for being black, by E. Verity, p.12.
(03/05/93): Hippies' convoy lays siege to a town, by S. O’Shea, p.14.
(10/05/93a): Murder, race and manipulation, p.6.
(10/05/93b): How race militants hijacked a tragedy, by P. Harris and P. Rose, p. 17.
(18/10/93): Black PC Victim of Anti-Racist Mob, by L. Harding, P. Rose and T. Jotischky,
p.1-2.
(28/09/95): Life for bomber in ‘reggae rage’ murder, p.28.
(29/09/95): Doesn't anyone understand the torture of trying to sleep through an all-night
disco?, P. Norman, p.11.

The Daily Mirror (via The British Newspaper Archive) 123

(07/09/51): The poison tongues of Britain, by J. Walters, p.2.
(19/10/51): Houses – but not for you!, p. 2.
(28/07/54): Paradise – at 35s., by L. Constantine, p.10.
(02/09/58): 2,000 riot. p.1.
(03/09/58): Black vs white: what we must do, p.1, 20.
(18/05/59): Blonde at window sees murder, by H. Johnson, p.5.
(19/05/59): The Yard and the Notting Hill murder, by H. Johnson, p.1.
(20/05/59): 10 who saw a murder won’t talk, p.5.
(26/09/69): How the seeds of race hate may be sown, p.19.
(20/10/75): Ban-the-ghetto race row, by P. Connew, p.9.
(24/01/76): Rebellion and curry are in the air, C. Dunne, p.7.
(04/05/76): Migrants live in top hotel, by M. McCarthy, p.4.

123
All sources were accessed online via the service provider The British Newspaper Archive/The British
Library which is also the copyright holder (in conjunction with its licencors). See:
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/content/terms_and_conditions.

275
(06/05/76): New flood of Asians to Britain, by E. Laxton, p.11.
(07/06/76a): Rampage of vengeance, J. Jackson, p.1, 2.
(07/06/76b): The Asian mutiny, p.2.
(08/06/76a): Five accused of Asian’s murder, by J. McEachran and J. Jackson, p.1.
(08/06/76b): Southall simmers, p.14-15.
(10/06/76): Face to face with hatred, by J. Mc Eachran, p.15.
(10/09/76): Dangers ahead in the seedy cities of strife, by D. Thompson, p.7.
(19/01/81): Firebomb inferno kills nine at party, by R. Rickets, p.7.
(03/03/81a): Confrontation, p.1.
(03/03/81b): Flashpoint in Fleet St., by J. Eachran, p.5.
(03/03/81c): The spoilers. by A. McQueen, J. Palmer and S. Greig, p.14-15.
(30/09/85a): 2 women raped in Brixton rampage, by B. Graham, p.1.
(30/09/85b): Too many ‘tragic accidents’, p.6.
(30/09/85c): Burnt, bombed, looted!, by P. Callan, p.14-15.
(01/10/85): Go and live with your gran, by E. Vale, p.7.
(08/10/85a): Vicious and inevitable, p.2.
(08/10/85b): Hacked to death, by B. Graham and J. McShane, p.5.
(14/10/85a): Bernie backs down on cash challenge, by T. Oliver, p.2.
(14/10/85b): The Grant Labour can do without, by J. Langdon, p.6.
(12/10/85): Riot jibe Bernie in £45,000 loan row, by J. Merrit and G. Barnes, p.5.
(25/10/85): Charles offers his homes to the down and outs, by J. Peacock, p.1.
(02/01/90): Kids face ban in crackdown on race-hate thugs, by P. Braund, p.2.
(03/09/91): Yobs rule the radio waves, by R. Chaytor, p.5.
(04/09/91): What in god’s name is happening, by R. Chaytor, p.14.
(24/04/93): Stabbed to death waiting for a bus, by S. James, p.5.
(08/05/93): Stephen killing: three held, p. 2.
(18/10/93): Thugs must be crushed, p.6.

The Manchester Guardian (until 1959) (via ProQuest Historical Newspapers) 124
(22/05/51): Inferior strains in human race: elimination or burden, p.4.
(04/11/53): Vigorous Resumption of Slum Clearance and Improvement of Older Property,
p.2.

124
All sources were accessed online via the service provider Proquest Historical Newspapers which is also
the copyright holder (in conjunction with its licencors).. See: https://about.proquest.com/en/products-
services/pq-hist-news/.

276
(20/01/54): City reassured on slum clearance, p.2.
(27/08/58): Other cities look at Nottingham, p.10.
(01/09/58): More thuggery, p.6.
(02/09/58): The background of Notting Hill: Outsiders taking a hand?, p.5.
(03/09/58a): Infection, p.6.
(03/09/58b): “Brown Town” diagnoses its own ills, p.12.
(04/09/58): Prison and fines for the racial trouble-makers, p.2.
(05/09/58): White and coloured men “ganged up on police”, p.3.
(09/09/58): Colour issues, p.6.
(18/05/59): More violence in North Kensington, p.1.
(22/05/59): Power to act as “specials”: Coloured defence body’s demand, p.1.
(06/08/59): “Not a racial murder”: Cochrane Inquest, p.6.

The Guardian (since 1959) (via ProQuest Historical Newspapers) 125

(06/10/69): Discontents of youth, by J. James, p.10.
(14/01/71): The attack on Mr Carr, p.12.
(05/11/71): National Front men accused before Race Relations Board, by J. Leishman,
p.5.
(08/05/73): The struggle for our cities: 1, by J. Hillman, p.18.
(22/06/73): - after getting aid job, p.24.
(15/10/74): Front line fight against the inner city syndrome, by A. Sproule, p.20.
(11/03/75): Harmony and understanding, by G. Sheridan, p.21.
(23/07/75): A record of neglect, p.12.
(13/08/75): Guardian reports examine studies of problems hampering inner-city areas of
Birmingham, Liverpool and Lambeth, by J. Ardill, S. Knewstub and G. Linscott,
p.5.
(05/09/75): Home truths on immigrants, by J. Hillman, p.6.
(12/09/75): ‘Yesterday’s White Paper is unique in that it was not conceived as part of a
double package in response to Powellite immigration hysteria’, by S. David, p.12
(06/10/75): Brixton: the living is hard, by N. Knewstub, p.6.
(17/01/76): Danger of ‘ghetto’ forming, by J. Fairhall, p.4.
(05/05/76a): The sour suite of Sussex, p.12.

125
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the copyright holder (in conjunction with its licencors). See: https://about.proquest.com/en/products-
services/pq-hist-news/.

277
(05/05/76b): The way to four-stars, by H. Hebert, p.13.
(09/05/76): The terrorised immigrants, by P. Toynbee, p.8.
(26/05/76): 4 on murder charge, p.6.
(29/05/76): A tale of two ghettos, by L. Mackie, p.11.
(01/06/76): Pakistanis attack Mellish speech, p.5.
(07/06/76): A long day in Southall, by L. Mackie, p.1, 12.
(08/06/76a): Five youths accused of killing Asian, by L. Mackie and P. Niesewand, p.1.
(08/06/76b): The cold comfort Briton, by R. Srinvasa, p.13.
(09/06/76): Minister to keep eye on Asians, by L. Mackie, p.24.
(10/06/76a): Mark alarmed by black opposition, by L. Mackie, p.1.
(10/06/76b): Inquest appeal for fair trial, p.6.
(14/06/76): Asian envoy in peace mission, by L. Mackie, p. 20
(22/06/76): Callaghan rejects race strife inquiry, by G. Linscott, p.22.
(18/09/76): Inner city decay ‘leads to tension’, by P. Needham, p.4.
(27/09/76): Arrests at demo outside mosque, p. 20.
(05/01/77): Black marks for newspapers over four race deaths, by J. Ezard, p.7.
(21/04/77): Battling gangs ‘created Southall terror’, p.2.
(03/05/77): Two gaoled for Asian's death, p.2.
(10/05/77): Riot in Southall was ‘not racial’, p.2.
(27/08/78): ‘Hotheads’ risk to race cash, p.3.
(05/01/78): Jury deadlock forces new incitement trial, by L. Mackie, p. 2
(03/11/78): Jewish split on NF, by D. Leigh, p.3.
(08/02/80): Parts of London ‘no-go areas for blacks due to sus law’, by L. Mackie, p.4
(05/04/80): Demands for public inquiry on Bristol riot, by D. Johnson, p.24.
(09/04/80): MPs seek police chief's removal, by M. White, p.4.
(29/04/80): Police procedure in riots to be studied, by I. Aitken, p.1.
(29/04/80): Inquiry into handling of riots, p.4.
(23/05/80): Police told of lawless Britain, by M. Pithers, p.4.
(20/01/81): Fire death detectives appeal to survivors, by A. Rusbridger, p.4.
(23/02/81): Unanswered questions on fire which killed 13, by L. Mackie, p.3.
(04/03/81): The fire down below, p.12.
(09/03/81): Foot caught in row over fire inquiry, by D. Pallister, p.20.
(24/04/81): Man seen at blaze house was ‘a good Samaritan’, by S. Cook, p.24.
(25/04/81): Inquest clash over ‘knives at party’ questioning, by S. Cook, p.24.

278
(29/04/81): New Cross fire inquest witness accused of lying, by S. Cook, p.24.
(30/04/81): Police called me a liar, girl tells New Cross fire inquest, by S. Cook, p.26.
(01/05/81): More New Cross witnesses admit lying to police, by S. Cook, p.24.
(02/05/81): ‘I’ll thump you’, says inquest witness in clash with lawyer, by D. Pallister,
p.2.
(06/05/81): Community battle to defuse racial tension, by P. Johnson, p.4.
(10/05/81): Verdict this week from fire-death inquest, by K. White, p.5.
(14/05/81): Deptford: back to the beginning, p.12.
(16/07/81): Brixton raids anger leads to new violence, p.1.
(28/07/81): Toxteth peace moves start as more violence hits riot area, by T. Sharratt, p.28.
(31/07/81): Rage in a cage, by I. Melish, p.8.
(02/12/81): DPP clears police in Brixton raids, by S. Cook, p.2.
(06/07/82): Deptford fire parents contest coroner's conduct, p.4.
(07/07/82): Deptford fire inquest ‘mistakes’, p.2.
(15/03/83): Not yet a race apart, by S. Cook, p.17.
(30/08/85): Race hate feels growth of a ghetto, p.3.
(29/09/85): Flashpoint that led to a night of terror, p.1-2.
(30/09/85a): Hurd rejects public inquiry demand, by D. McKie, p.1.
(30/09/85b): Hard choices to avoid Brixton's fire next time, p.14.
(01/10/85): Brixton police say outside agitation failed, by D. Rose, p. 1, 3.
(05/10/85): Low-key Hurd makes delayed visit to Brixton, by C. Brown, p.2.
(07/10/85): Policeman killed in riot: Guns fired in violence after woman's death, by G.
Parry, J. Ezard and A. Rawnsley, p.1.
(08/10/85): Hurd backs police over plastic bullets, by G. Parry and A. Rawnsley, p.1.
(09/10/85a): Anger smoulders in Tottenham, by D. Pallister, p.1.
(09/10/85b): Farm where hopes grew, by A. Travis, p.2.
(10/10/85): Council soothes Labour disquiet on Grant, by M. Linton, p.30.
(11/10/85): Hurd offers police new weapon in law, J. Naughtie, p.1.
(18/10/85): Out of court, by T. Jennings, p.12.
(11/11/85): Brixton outlook: one law for black, one law for blue, p.7.
(12/11/85): Thousands on black justice march, by D. Rose, p.5.
(05/12/85): Jury has vindicated us, say Jarretts, by D. Hearst, p.1.
(06/12/85): When the new policing brings terror to the home, by M. Benn, p.19.
(22/03/86): Suspended sentences for Groce on gun charges, p.4.

279
(15/04/86): No proceedings against police in Jarrett case, by P. Keel, p.32.
(17/04/86): Broadwater chief attacks police investigating police, by D. Hearst, p.4.
(07/01/87): Mrs Groce tells of gun pointed at her heart, by S. Tirbutt, p.1, 36.
(08/01/87): Lovelock tells of fears at stake-out, by S. Tirbutt, p.2.
(15/01/87): Sympathy ‘must not sway Groce jury’, by S. Tirbutt, p.5.
(16/01/87): Inspector cleared by jury of malicious wounding, by S. Tirbutt, p. 1.
(03/02/87): Gun raid chief is cleared, by D. Pallister, p.4.
(20/06/87): Officers in Groce affair censured, by S. Smith, p.2.
(24/05/89): Drug raid arrests spark clashes, by O. Bowcott, p. 24.
(18/07/89): Hit-and-run gangs attack city's Muslims, by M. Walnwright, p.5.
(30/09/89): Police tactics provoke anger, by D. Sharrock and A. Culf, p.3.
(27/04/91): Racism rises on tide of propaganda, by D. Campbell and V. Chaudhary, p.2.
(13/09/91): Gangs thrive on tough traditions, by P. Hetherington, p.2.
(09/01/93): Joyriders trying to ram police cars on ‘zoo’ estate, p.3.
(11/01/93): The Home Office's custard pie, by E. Pilkington, p.19.
(24/02/93): Shotgun raiders kill man in shop, by D. Campbell, p.4.
(24/04/93): Gang hunted after bus stop race killing, by D. Campbell, p.3.
(26/04/93): Angry right plays IRA card at rally, by L. Jury, p.4.
(07/05/93): Mandela meets family of London stabbing victim, by E. Pilkington, p.4.
(15/10/93): Condon amends anti-race demo, by D. Campbell, p.5.
(18/10/93): Armies clash blindly in racism's suburban battleground, by D. Lawrence,
p.20.
(12/02/94): Five arrested after race attack on Bangladeshi, by V. Chaudhary, p. 2.
(18/07/94): Boy, 5, dies trying to save dog in fire, p.7.
(10/07/95): The ties that bind: In an adjournment debate on Tuesday, the text of which
needs to be read in full, p.13.
(13/09/95): Noise-rage man ‘bombed flat’, by A. Johnson, p.3.
(28/09/95): Man who firebombed noisy reggae party jailed for life, by E. Pilkington, p.7.
(29/03/99): Civil rights movement aims to unite fight against racism, by A. Gentleman,
p.7.

The Observer (via ProQuest Historical Newspapers) 126

126
All sources were accessed online via the service provider Proquest Historical Newspapers which is also
the copyright holder (in conjunction with its licencors).. See: https://about.proquest.com/en/products-
services/pq-hist-news/.

280
(19/02/50): Shades of Kipling--And of Hogarth, by H. Massingham, p.2.
(07/09/58a): The Week: Man's Inhumanity to Man...In England, by W. Clark, p.5.
(07/09/58b): On trial, p.12.
(24/05/59): Fear Dominates A Troubled Week, p.15.
(07/06/70): Fighter for the Gypsies, by P. Toynbee, p.17.
(30/05/76): What it's like to live next door, by L. Marks, p.4.
(06/06/76): Asian plea after killing, by G. Brock, p.1.
(04/07/76): 1,000 at funeral, p.1, 10.
(25/07/76): Relf's 'for sale' sign in flames, p.1.
(15/01/78): Kingsley Read's long hot summer, p.13.
(17/09/78): Dossier reveals East End terror, p.5.
(08/03/81): ‘Our deaths don't matter to you’, by L. Marks and K. White, p.13.
(26/04/81): Tempers run high at party inquest, by K. White, p.3.
(03/05/81): Laughter and cheers at death-fire inquest, by K. White, p.3.
(17/05/81): New doubt over youths’ ‘no fight’ evidence, by L. Marks and K. White, p.4.
(24/05/81): Youth was stabbed in back before blaze began, by K. White, p.4.
(19/07/81): Brixton leaders' fury over raid, by J. Judd and K. White, p.4.
(29/09/85): Rioters set Brixton ablaze, by N Davis, P. Lashmar, M. Bailey and A. Bate,
p.1, 2.
(15/09/91): No hope in no-go land, by B. Hugill and D. Rose, p.23.
(16/05/93): Climate of fear surrounds racist shop of hate, by N. Cicutti and P. Ghazl, p.8.
(17/10/93): Violence erupts at race march, by P. Beaumont, D. Nelson, M. Durham and
P. Victor, p.2.
(29/05/94): Echoes of the Thirties as 100,000 join carnival march against fascists, p.5.

The Times (via The Times Historical Archive) 127

(16/10/50): Conservative Conference, p. 3.
(22/05/51): Menace Of Excessive Populations, p.2.
(04/11/53): The Queen's Speech, p.5.
(30/04/55): Conservative “Programme for Prosperity”, p.5.
(15/05/59): Call For Vigilance In Notting Hill, p. 9.
(19/05/59): Race Tension Increased By Murder, p.6.

127
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which is also the copyright holder (in conjunction with its licencors). See:
https://www.gale.com/intl/primary-sources

281
(02/12/68): Unite and slap back-Black Power call, p.1.
(27/04/70): 20 held after clash with police, p.1.
(23/05/70): Kirk rejects 'ban immigrants' call, 3.
(18/09/70): Prosperity comes with a new heart, by D. Wilsworth, p.3.
(15/03/71): Poetry and extremism from a jail cell, p.2.
(21/05/73): Warning of ‘urban crisis’ in Britain, p.4.
(12/06/73): Escape bid ‘was based on Black power-type plot’, p.3.
(10/04/75a): Inner London needs factories, report urges, by P. Evans, p.2.
(10/04/75b): Politicians not planners must take decisions that will save London, by G.
Lomas, p.16.
(05/05/76a): Homeless Asians likely to be moved to former workhouse by end of week,
council says, by P. Healy, p.4.
(05/05/76b): Four Stars Too Many, p.17.
(18/05/76): MPs concerned at expulsion of Asians from Africa: Malawi High
Commissioner to see minister, p.6.
(25/05/76): Mr Powell quotes confidential report disclosing immigrant rackets, p.1-2.
(27/05/76a): Immigration figures show rise of 728,000, by N. Hodgkinson, p.2.
(27/05/76b): Dealing with immigration problems, by S. Leigh, D. Prem, J. Stokes and M.
D. Roy, p.17.
(07/06/76): Asians clash with police in protest over killing, by D. Geddes, p.1.
(08/06/76): Five charged with murder of Southall Asian youth, by R. Parker, p.1.
(09/06/76a): Leadership hoping that violence has eased, by R. Parker, p.5.
(09/06/76b): Immigrants in Southall form a toghtly knit community, by P. Howard, p.5.
(11/06/76): Asians demand inquiry into alleged violence, p.2.
(14/06/76: 2): Pakistan minister to visit London for racial tension talks, p.2.
Hollings, M./Singh, Bachittar/Chaudhary, K.L., Parkinson, J./Bhambra, J.S./Crossfield,
L./Bronnert, D. (30/06/76): Restoring racial harmony in Southall, p.15
(05/07/76): Asians call for inquiry into ‘racial violence’. p. 3.
(30/07/76): Optimism and pessimism about race relations, by P. Evans, p.4.
(31/07/76): The effort must come from the minorities themselves, by P. Evans, p.12.
(03/05/77): Two young men jailed over Asian's death, p.5.
(03/03/78): South Africa plans 'no go' area along its borders, p.8.
(14/02/80): British supervisors place most blame on Mugabe men for intimidation in
Rhodesia province, by N. Ashford, p. 7.

282
(15/08/80): Whites urge reprisals for attacks in the Cape, p.5.
(20/01/81): Police seek cars after party blaze, by S. Tendler, p.5.
(30/01/81): Fear grows among black leaders that racial attack led to 12 deaths, by L.
Hodges, p.3.
(11/02/81): Police searching for arson motive, by S. Tendler, p.4.
(03/03/81a): West End violence: Police with riot shields, p.1.
(03/03/81b): Violence as West Indians march in fire protest, by R. Ford, p.2.
(22/04/81): Deptford blaze began with soaked carpet, by C. Seton, p.1.
(25/04/81): Deptford fire inquest interrupted by shouts during questioning, by L. Hodges,
p.2.
(29/04/81): Perjury warning at Deptford inquest, by L. Hodges, p.4.
(02/05/81): QC taunted at Deptord fire inquest, by L. Hodges, p.2.
(13/05/81a): Judge refuses writ to halt Deptford inquest, by L. Hodges, p.1.
(13/05/81b): Inquest On An Inquest, p.15.
(14/05/81): Deptford verdict denounced, by L. Hodges, p.2.
(26/06/81): Party fire witnesses rob widow, p.4.
(15/07/81): Riots: Police and equipment, by L. Heren, p.2.
(30/09/85a): Shot woman’s son faces gun charge, p.1.
(30/09/85b): Man with a reputation for thoroughness, p.3
(01/10/85): Labour leaders seek local police control, by P. Webster, p.1
(02/10/85): Police bridges to the public under stress, by S. Tendler, p.2.
(07/10/85): Police officer killed in riot, by P. Clough and C. Hughes, p.1.
(19/11/85): Keeping the lid on the inner cities, by C. Hughes, p.14.
(17/12/85): Who will defend us against the bullies in blue?, by B. Levin, p.10.
(06/01/87): My moment of horror, by police marksman, by D. Williams, p.9.
(07/01/87): Police in raid feared a leak, by R. Kay, p.3.
(24/05/91): Panoply of terror on the streets, J. Daley, p.14.
(04/09/91): Oxford police attacked, p.1.
(14/09/91): Peace or petrol bombs - a tale of two estates, by K. Gill, p.2.
(27/05/92): Landowners fear next move of hippy convoys, C. Seton, p.5.
(24/04/93): Black teenager dies after knife attack by white youths, by V. Tendler and P.
Stewart, p.3.
(03/05/93): MPs urge action on racial killings, by J. Landale, p.3.
(10/05/93): Race protesters charged, p.2.

283
(29/06/93): Gun gangs rule the rat-runs of Moss Side, by M. Hornsnell, p.7.
(18/10/93a): Black PC says riot may force him out, by R. Duce, p.1.
(18/10/93b): Police scour video footage in hunt for march infiltrators, by R. Duce, p.3.
(19/10/93): Don't let the thugs drive you out, black PC told, by S. Tendler, p.7.
(08/07/95): Condon accused of “black muggers” slur, by R. Ford and S. Tendler, p.1.
(28/09/95): Firebomber given life for attack on noisy reggae party, by M. Horsnell, p.13.
25/08/00): Statistics support racist suspicions, by R. Ford, p.3.

284