The Brixton uprisings of 1981: 40 years on

On the 40th anniversary of the Brixton uprisings, Abolitionist Futures pays tribute to the struggles against racist policing that profoundly shape the reality of Britain today, and which have left their lasting mark on its history.

The events of the 10-12th April 1981 brought the malaise of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain out into relief with penetrating clarity; in a way that often only mass people’s rebellion can.

1981 was the high-point of over a decade of escalating conflict between the British state and its agencies on one hand, and increasingly militant black and brown communities on the other, against the backdrop of a deepening political crisis.  

The year itself was ushered in with an act of fatal state neglect: the official response to the New Cross Massacre of January 18th was muted at best, malicious at worst. The onset of Thatcherism, law and order politics and the passage of the racist British Nationality Act only heightened the temperature.

The events in Brixton were sparked by Operation ‘Swamp 81’, the mass saturation policing in Brixton in which nearly 1000 stop and searches took place over 6 days, with 118 arrests; the overwhelming majority being black.

From 10th to 12th April, the people of Brixton were locked in pitched battle with the Metropolitan police, while that July other urban centres rose up against their respective forces - in Toxteth, Handsworth, Moss Side, Chapeltown, as well as smaller disturbances across the country.

The first response of the Thatcher government was thoroughly on brand: a reflexive retreat to violent repression. The uprisings in Brixton, as well as over summer, were managed through fierce policing, including through the use of the paramilitary Special Patrol Group of the Met Police. Following the events that summer, the government secured plastic bullets, riot guns, water cannons and equipment for mainland police forces from the Ministry of Defence: all having been battle-tested in the North of Ireland. Meanwhile three military camps were made available for the housing of prisoner overflow, while the Cabinet mulled over plans to re-introduce a Riot Act.

But the strength of the Brixton uprisings also demanded a step-change; the second prong of the Government’s response to the uprisings was one of containing the mass revolt seen on the streets. Central to this was the work of Lord Scarman, commissioned days after Brixton to “inquire urgently into the serious disorder in Brixton on 10-12 April 1981 and to report, with the power to make recommendations”.

The report from the Scarman inquiry, released in November that year, effectively gave a clean bill of health to the police, legitimising the parameters of law and order politics while outright denying the existence of ‘institutional racism’. 

Instead, the report oriented its recommendations towards better police training, diverse police recruitment and developing community-police relations; seeking to transform the dynamic of confrontation between black communities and the police into one of mutual co-operation.

The Scarman strategy of reform could never have hoped to preclude rebellions against policing - as was made clear in 1985, ‘95 and 2001 - but its containment policy did help prevent these spreading into national uprisings again - until 2011.

Retracing the history leading up to Brixton ‘81 is hauntingly familiar. The spiralling political crisis and rising militancy of the 1970s is instantly recognisable; the stinging hard-right renaissance that closed it feels intimately raw.

Also familiar is the bipartisan support for law and order, the overt politicisation of the police forces, and the people’s response, as embodied by last summer’s Black Lives Matter-inspired wave of protest across the country.

Beyond the historical parallels lie the bitter ironies: the government’s paranoid search for ‘left extremists’ to indict for Brixton then, are echoed in its attempt to investigate ‘progressive extremism’ in the Black Lives Matter movement today. While the Scarman report denied the existence of institutional racism, last week’s Sewell report diminished its importance. The lukewarm calls for reformed police recruitment seem stuck on endless loop.

The spectre of history hangs overhead - for us, but equally for the government.
While those in power today can emulate the bluster of Thatcherism, they seem entirely bereft of the kind of broader political project that underpinned it.

In rehashing the rhetoric of the 80s without the substance, they seem more prisoners of the past than students - meanwhile, for those continuing the struggle against police and state violence, the initiative now lies firmly with us.

The Brixton uprisings of 1981 form part of the long arc of resistance against policing in Britain that is deeply imprinted on the work of those struggling towards the abolition of police and prisons now. Today, we make their legacies.