{"id":558,"date":"2017-02-16T10:28:43","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T10:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crab.port.ac.uk\/?p=558"},"modified":"2017-02-16T16:18:32","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T16:18:32","slug":"handsworth-1985-thatchers-government-and-the-criminalisation-of-young-black-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crab.port.ac.uk\/?p=558","title":{"rendered":"Handsworth, 1985: Thatcher\u2019s government and the criminalisation of young black men"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jodi Burkett<\/em><\/p>\n

As part of my ongoing research into the creation of post-imperial Britain, particularly in changing conceptions of \u2018race\u2019 and attitudes to immigration, I have recently been reading reports by the Thatcher government regarding the \u2018race riots\u2019 in Handsworth in 1985. These documents, released after the 30th<\/sup> anniversary of the riots, reveal a government confident and self-assured in its belief that it was right in its handling of social and economic policies. However, there are hints that they were aware that something was not right in British society, although they fail to put a finger on what exactly it was. This in itself is quite revealing as one of the significant problems, it could be argued, was their very ignorance to what the real problems were.<\/p>\n

Of course, I am not the only person interested in looking again at the tumultuous years of the early 1980s. In the last five(ish) years there have been numerous academic and public re-appraisals of the era, many of which have sought to draw parallels between the Cameron Coalition and then Conservative governments (2010-present) and the Thatcher governments<\/a>. The first Thatcher government (1979-1983) was a period which saw extensive social unrest and protest, rivalled only by the second Thatcher government (1983-1987). As well as the \u2018race\u2019 riots, which I will discuss more in a moment, there was extensive labour unrest<\/a>, the Falklands war<\/a>, and the Northern Irish \u2018troubles\u2019<\/a>, to keep the government busy \u2018ensuring law and order\u2019.<\/p>\n

The \u2018race riots\u2019 which occurred between 1980 and 1985 have, quite rightly, been the subject of extensive scrutiny and debate. The first question which arises is how exactly to refer to them. For many involved, they should properly be understood as \u2018uprisings\u2019<\/a>.\u00a0 The government was quite clear that they were \u2018riots\u2019, highlighting their lawlessness and aimlessness. The government depicted them as pointless destruction carried out by \u2018alienated young black people who had opted out of society at large, who had no lawful occupation and who tended to be involved with drugs<\/a>.\u2019<\/p>\n

There was, of course, never any evidence presented to support the accusation that most people involved in the riots were drug dealers – or indeed, that most of the black population of Handsworth was so occupied – as this statement suggests. Nor was there any exploration or understanding of what young black men, or indeed anyone else, should do when confronted with extremely high levels of unemployment. There was widespread agreement that these young people suffered some of the worst rates of unemployment across the country. In some places, unemployment rates for those aged 16 to 24 were up to 80%. What the government expected these young people to do with their time, or how they were expected to earn any money, was never discussed.<\/p>\n

The government were keen to point out that in the wake of the Scarman Inquiry into the Brixton \u2018riots\u2019 of 1981<\/a>, \u2018\u00a320 million of public money had been spent in Handsworth\u2019 \u2013 on what exactly they didn\u2019t elaborate. They were also adamant that no government representative should argue or even implicitly accept that \u2018unemployment inevitably led to lawlessness\u2019. \u00a0This is, of course, true. What was clearly not understood was that opposition to government policies or, more precisely opposition to the treatment meted out by the police upon black communities in the name of upholding \u2018law and order\u2019, was not, and is not, synonymous with \u2018lawlessness\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Secretary of State for the Home Department, Douglas Hurd, was happy to report that there was \u2018very little sympathy in the area for the deeper social diagnoses\u2019 that had been given by the Social Democratic Party, amongst others, as an explanation of the \u2018riots\u2019. This, however, never addresses whether there was any truth to the \u2018deeper social diagnoses\u2019, whatever they were, just that some nameless \u2018local politicians\u2019 did not have sympathy for them.<\/p>\n

The criminalisation of young black men was not new in 1985 and persists today<\/a>. What can looking into the events at Handsworth and these recently released government documents tell us? They speak to the ways in which \u2018polite\u2019 (read: white) British society was being created and re-created in this period. They highlight the blind spot that those in power had regarding the lived reality of young black men in some of Britain\u2019s largest cities in the early 1980s. They show the development of policing in this period and the close relationship between patterns of policing and governmental views of certain groups. And this just scratches the surface\u2026<\/p>\n

Jodi Burkett is Principal Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jodi Burkett As part of my ongoing research into the creation of post-imperial Britain, particularly in changing conceptions of \u2018race\u2019 and attitudes to immigration, I have recently been reading reports by the Thatcher government regarding the \u2018race riots\u2019 in Handsworth in 1985. These documents, released after the 30th anniversary of the riots, reveal a government confident and self-assured in its belief that it was right in its handling of social and economic policies. However, there are hints that they were aware that something was not right in British society, although they fail to put a finger on what exactly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/crab.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/thatcher.jpg?fit=640%2C640&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8bhxC-90","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":566,"url":"https:\/\/crab.port.ac.uk\/?p=566","url_meta":{"origin":558,"position":0},"title":"Event: Anti-racist perspectives on ‘fundamental British values’","author":"CRaB admin","date":"27th February 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Citizenship, 'Race' and Belonging research network presents: Anti-racist perspectives on 'fundamental British values' Monday 20 March, 3-5pm Milldam Building LE0.05, University of Portsmouth, Burnaby Road, PO1 3AS Speakers: Moazzam Begg, Outreach Director, Cage Sarah Keenan, Lecturer, School of Law, Birkbeck College Kojo Koram, Lecturer, School of Law, University of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News and Events"","block_context":{"text":"News and Events","link":"https:\/\/crab.port.ac.uk\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/crab.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Justice_bw.jpg?fit=1200%2C797&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/crab.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Justice_bw.jpg?fit=1200%2C797&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/crab.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Justice_bw.jpg?fit=1200%2C797&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/crab.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Justice_bw.jpg?fit=1200%2C797&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/crab.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/Justice_bw.jpg?fit=1200%2C797&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":802,"url":"https:\/\/crab.port.ac.uk\/?p=802","url_meta":{"origin":558,"position":1},"title":"STEAM Education: A Global HipHop Perspective","author":"Charles Leddy-Owen","date":"6th February 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This workshop explores how HipHop can reconfigure educational practices by taking an artistic approach to educational and social reforms. 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