Jill Rees: Welcome Press

In the late 1970s I lived in Brixton, the poor area in South London which had ended up being home to many immigrants from the West Indies. Being first generation, largely working class uneducated young people, they had few contacts locally, and little idea how things worked. While the older men went to the workers’ pubs, especially ‘The George’ in Railton Road, where they were largely accepted by the white South Londoners, to play dominoes and billiards, drink English ‘bitter’ beer and talk about work. Their fat wives would stay home, watching TV and chatting with other wives about their low-paid jobs in cleaning and the like. Meanwhile their children, now young adults the same age as me, felt in between the culture of their parents and the vivid ‘punk-rock’ culture of their peers, who didn’t really fully accept them as part of their generation.

Meanwhile, the world of politics was in upheaval. The oil crash of the mid 1970s had left Britain economically vulnerable, and unemployment was high. The sense of bringing immigrants to work in a country short of workers no longer made sense, when there were too many workers but a shortage of skills.  The people they still thought of as immigrants, because of the difference in colour, were however locally-born like themselves.

The IRA, the rebel movement of Ireland which was trying to make the government in London yield Northern Ireland to Eire, was at the peak of the mainland bombing campaign. I had witnessed several bomb attacks, and narrowly escaped an explosion in a cafe where I usually took breakfast of tea and bacon and eggs.  A law called the ‘suss’ law had been brought in, ostensibly to enable the police to pick up anyone suspected of terrorism, but used in fact to take Irish and black people into the police station for some dubious interview techniques. Friends who had been arrested under ‘suss’ and taken in for the three days then permitted, reported beatings and mistreatment: being placed between tow mattresses and jumped on, having cigarettes stumped out on their bodies and so on. Later the infamously racist ‘Met’ police would be taken to task for its treatment of innocent citizens.

In the prison meanwhile, the notorious Brixton Prison just up the road, black prisoners sometimes disappeared for weeks at a time, without relatives being informed of their whereabouts. When immigrants were without families, and in a situation where there were no educated black lawyers or ‘friendly’ white lawyers, almost anything was permitted. The local secondary school was known for its institutional racism, and alienated young black boys within a year of their going there. Invariably, these lads would leave school without any qualifications, and often semi-literate.

Eventually some boys managed to get through and go on to college to do ‘A’ levels, bearing God only knows what insults and physical bullying to get through. A team of black lawyers appeared on Railton Road, and the disappearances from the prison ceased after the first enquiry, along with the torture and the unjustified arrests.

In Jamaica, the ‘homeland’ of the parents, meanwhile, Bob Marley and the Wailers were taking the world by storm, encouraging black youth to sort their lives out with the Rasta religion, and to stand up for themselves in an unjust society.  Smoking ‘ganja’ , growing their hair into long  dreadlocks and playing reggae music was behaviour the hard-working parents thoroughly disapproved of, of course, not least because it got their kids into even greater trouble with the police, this time justified as marijuana was illegal in the UK. This time, the young people were proud of getting arrested; it was for their cause, the right to be Jamaican.

In 1978 the rock Against Racism march walked through Brixton, with Brockwell Park full of beautiful music including The Clash, and black and white youths singing and dancing together. The march was protected from the new neo-Nazi racist groups by the Metropolitan police. What a turnabout! Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister, and John Major, one day to succeed her, led Lambeth council.

 Local residents of the beautiful spacious Victorian terraced houses, which gave themselves perfectly to the Jamaican habit of standing outside, chatting and smoking, were to be sold off. Tenant families were unceremoniously sent packing, and those who refused to go mysteriously received firebombs through the front windows, blamed on the neo-Nazi National Front movement, but possibly from a more official source. Tanks from the nearby Chelsea barracks frequently were rolled down the narrow residential streets, intimidating the families and children. One by one, the families agreed to move into the vile concrete prefabricated council flats opposite the police station. The culture of Jamaican London broke down.  The gambling houses, the dominoes pubs, the reggae discos, all closed down, and disenfranchised youth increasingly targeted by the right wing government, started to become the notorious gang culture we have today, with hard drugs, guns, and very little religious zeal.

Of course, on the other side of the tracks, the Access course was started in Brixton College which enabled young black people who had left the horrible school without qualifications to get into universities and training courses, and those who did well were able to move out of the slums and join their white peers in the eighties boom. Their children in turn have something like equality today. Gradually, they are moving out of London and becoming part of the landscape. Improved anti-racist laws and sympathetic lawyers mean that racism has been largely kicked out of official life. The third and fourth generation of those original immigrants consider themselves part of British culture, and may visit the West Indies on holiday, like everyone else.  True mixing is still new, however, and as I speak a local teacher here in the sticks has been suspended for ‘warning’ her class

‘Don’t be afraid, but the new kid in class is black!’ At least in this day and age, this kind of slur is taken seriously.

In the Hotel we call the Meridion in Abuja, I was introduced to a Very Important Person. This noble-looking gentleman told me that he was educated in the UK, in Loughborough University. I started to reply inanely that I hope he had been as welcomed in my country as I was in his, when the words choked in my mouth: what if he had not had such good experiences, but had met with hostility and racism?

True, it is different to be an African to a Jamaican, because it was the poorest and lowest- class Jamaicans who were taken on as workers , rather than rich middle-class people, but still any black person is likely to experience some racism at some point. Perhaps you will be served last in a shop queue, perhaps a taxi won’t stop for you, or a comment may be made about your white girlfriend. This man correctly interpreted my hesitation,

‘Yes,’ he said gallantly, ‘My reception in England was very warm.’ I was relieved.

1176 words

© Jill Rees

18 October 2008

Related posts

• Who is Jill Rees? (0)
• Which death? (1)
• What Headscarf? (0)
• Update (0)
• The Snake has two heads (0)

Tags: 1970s, Africans in the UK, black, Bob Marley, Brixton, immigration UK, Jamaicans, Leadership, National Front, racism in the UK, Rastafaria, Reggae, Rock Against Racism.