LONDON: Twenty years ago I was employed as a youth worker on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, north London, when it erupted over the death of Cynthia Jarrett during a police raid. I was labelled a black community leader by the press as I spoke in defence of the community supporting their right to defend themselves from attack by racist police officers.
As a result I was arrested three times during the Farm investigations, twice on the grounds that I was involved in the murder of PC Keith Blakelock during the disturbances. Like the majority of those arrested, I was never charged and I successfully sued the police for their unlawful and unwarranted behaviour.
In March 1987, the day after the Tottenham Three had been convicted of the murder of PC Blakelock, I wrote in the Guardian that white Britain was allowing three innocent men to be imprisoned because it needed scapegoats for the events of that night, and that it had allowed the Met [metropolitan police] to pursue a campaign of revenge against the Broadwater Farm community, rather than an investigation to identify the guilty few.
Now, on the 20th anniversary of the disturbances, I wonder whether things have really improved for black people in the UK since then. I am not sure that they have. Trevor Phillips, chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, recently likened black and ethnic-minority communities in Britain to those in America’s deep south, ‘marooned outside the mainstream’ of society.
That certainly applies to the majority of the young black people I meet on the ‘Farm’. For those who have been unable to escape since 1985, almost nothing has changed. While outwardly Broadwater Farm may look different, the £33m spent on its refurbishment has improved only its physical appearance. For most young black people there the issues are exactly the same as they have always been.
The key issue is still institutional racism and its impact, whether through bad policing, poor education or a lack of jobs.
Many of my generation sacrificed ourselves years ago. We chose not to engage with the institutionally racist institutions that made up British society. We decided that since our parents, many of whom came here qualified as doctors, nurses and police officers, could not get proper jobs then the same would happen to us. In response we either joined the black voluntary sector or took to the streets and created an informal economy.
We became ‘hustlers’ instead of fodder for the factories our parents had been forced to work in. We made these sacrifices when we were too young to know better. Now, 20 years on, many of my peers want to engage but do not know how. They want to work but haven’t developed the skills. Many of them are almost unemployable.
Things are still so bad that even now we are being described by service providers as ‘hard-to-reach communities’. It’s an odd term that means little, because some service providers, such as the police, always know where to find black people when they need to.
The upshot is that there is now a lack of leadership in most of Britain’s grassroots black communities. Our young are refighting the battles we fought two decades ago, and my generation is unable to give the guidance that might enable them to be more successful.
Our young people’s expression of anger has turned inwards on themselves. Now the currency of the informal economy has become hard drugs and guns, and we face this new phenomenon that the press calls ‘black-on-black crime’. But in reality we are witnessing a never-ending cycle. The only way to break it is to empower grassroots black communities to help themselves.
The 2002 Race Relations Amendment Act, which requires service providers to engage with communities such as mine, might have helped. But on too many occasions it is the public sector which decides what the consultation should be, and who the black community’s representatives are.
These are often sycophants who have little credibility in the grassroots communities, and no links to the neediest, so any new resources still fail to reach the target.
While the legislation is a step in the right direction, this government has failed to involve the very communities that it is there to protect, and ensure their proper representation. So black people continue to believe that no one gives a damn, and some of their behaviour reflects this belief.
Twenty years ago, on an estate in Tottenham, we stood up to racism. And 20 years later we are still reeling from its effects.
The only solution is to ensure that black and ethnic-minority communities can represent themselves — and are empowered to be part of the solution rather than seen as part of the problem. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service
