Brixtonians
James HughesOnslow
The Fijian grocer in Landor Road, half a mile from Brixton, has a good line in half-threatening banter when West Indian youths try to steal sweets from his shop. 'You mind your step', he tells them, 'or we'll send you back where you come from.' To which the blacks, who unlike him have been born in this country, usually reply if they are quick enough, or if they've heard this one before, 'You mind your step or we'll send you back where you come from.'
Since the April riots, however, there seems to have been a moratorium on racialist jokes in Landor Road, a 700 yard microcosm of the planet which also contains two Indian newsagents and another from Bangladesh, two Indian grocers, a West Indian baker, a West Indian car-hire firm, a pub with live reggae music and another with live jazz, a Chinese pancake house and a Chinese fish and chip shop, two halal butchers, an Italian greengrocer and an Italian shoe repairer, a Jewish photographer, an African (I think) electrician, a Greek kebab house and Aphrodite the 'continental' hair stylists who sell wigs for black women whose hair won't grow long. And there is the English section, a butcher, greengrocer, ironmonger, betting shop, grocer, florist and off-licence.
The consensus of Landor Road thinking in the last two months, if I judge it correctly, is that it's a bit tough blaming the blacks or the police for causing all the trouble in Brixton when just about anyone can cause a not these days. There has been some relief locally that recent events all over the country have proved this theory right. The other factor which has relieved tension in Brixton recently is the benign presence of Lord Scarman in the Town Hall. His evenhanded humour has punctured the pomposity of police officers and black lawyers alike. He has gained the trust of minorities who had threatened to boycott the inquiry, enabling them to see that the police are not above the law and that their Own radical representatives are sometimes a bit daft. Credit also for clever staging of the inquiry which makes Lord Scarman, from the distance of the public seating, look rather like a Chinese sage? I was walking back from the Town Hall to my house near Landor Road last Friday at the end of the first stage of the inquiry, just before the weekend violence broke out. There was a lively discussion going on in the Fijian shop between a Jamaican and that traditional fount of London wisdom, a White taxi-driver. Since the April riots few People have had the nerve to mention these matters to the West Indians, most of whom are highly embarrassed that black youths have been held responsible. But the skinheads have changed all that.
The taxi-driver was telling the West Indian that the Scots were the most violent trouble-makers on earth, even worse than the Irish. He sees these hooligans near King's Cross and Euston every time there is a home international at Wembley. The West Indian was putting forward the Whitelaw theory: parents don't know how to control their offspring these days. Back in Jamaica, family ties ensure that children are strictly accountable to their parents. Over here they have too much time to themselves and too much money.
The Bangladeshi newsagent, who came over here ten years ago because he was fed up with civil war, was the first to board up his plate glass windows. And the first to take them down again on Monday morning. Riots mostly happen at weekends because, he says, contrary to Mr Foot's belief, rioters have work to do. This newsagent also has an explanation for the fact that Asians are much less likely to smash up shops than West Indians or Europeans: too many of them have families who are in the retail business themselves.
Surveying the damage in Brixton on Monday morning it seems most unlikely that anyone would have bothered to break into a newsagent's anyway. Far from being indiscriminate anarchists, the rampaging youths were highly selective about the windows they smashed. Shoes, clothes, roller-skates, bicycles, radios and motorcycle parts seems to be their order of preference. Jewellers would no doubt be high on the list if they were not also the most difficult to break into. One shoe shop escaped unscathed by having only odd shoes in the window and it was noticeable that outfitters selling drab grey suits suffered much less than those selling jeans.
Much was made on the television news of the fact that the shop directly opposite the entrance to the Scarman inquiry was one of the first to be vandalised. The shop in question sold Lonsdale sporting equipment — gym shoes, T-shirts and the like. All the other windows in the street, including a bank, a travel agent, a carpet shop and an optician, were undamaged. One experienced local observer told me on Sunday that there would not be a third night of violence in Brixton because the thieves had taken all they wanted. Battersea was a more likely venue, he said. He was right.
The violence in Brixton has been very different in character from the riots in Notting Hill four years ago when the white people (including myself reporting for the Spectator) were systematically mown down by hordes of visiting blacks. There will be pressure on left-wing politicians to blame unemployment and on the right to give the police more power. If it's the kind of thing you want to hear it will be very nice to hear. But the people who live in these areas will know that any politician who offers a straightforward solution simply doesn't understand the situation.
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