Return to Southall
Roy Kerridge
Every time I take a liking to a district, someone tries to burn it down. The latest casualty is Southall, where I stayed recently. Hearing of the riots there, I hurried back as soon as I was able, two days after the violence had died down. A shopkeeping family I knew slightly had suffered no harm, and their daughter Serita, aged 12, gave me what information she could, in a charming part-Indian part-Cockney accent.
'Lots of skin'eads came in a bus to hear a pop group in the Hambrough Tavern up the road there. We don't have skin'eads here in Southall, except little ones at school, and those are very nice. These were big grownup ones. I saw them going past and they looked really nasty. Near the pub they all barged into shops looking for food, and hit an old lady my dad knows. There's a well-off family there, who own three shops in a row, and that's where the skins went. They attacked some more shopkeepers, arid kicked their windows in, and then went back in the pub. There weren't any police around, because we hardly see any police here, but now there's hundreds!'
Lots of us turned up to fight the skin'eads for what they'd done, and in the middle of the fight, the police turned up and both sides began fighting them. Then us people tore a whole wall down for bricks to throw at the police.' 'Good heavens, I never knew Indians could be so fierce', I exclaimed. 'Yes, we can be very fiery when our blood's up! The police were protecting the skin'eads you see. Next night us people attacked the police again with bricks and with bottles. Sirens were going all the time, fire engines, ambulances, everything! Everyone says the police were on the side of the skin'eads for trying to protect them after what they'd done.'
Her father climed in at this point, and began abusing the police, first of all for never being there when you needed them, and secondly for taking the side of the skinheads. The skinheads themselves probably had their own version of the event, describing the police as Paki-lovers'. No one seemed to realise that the police are supposed to prevent revenge, and have to put personal feelings aside if we are to have the law of court houseand not oflynch mob.
A myth had arisen that the late arrival of the police was planned, so as to let the skinheads finish off as many Asians as they could, although the facts seemed to show that the skinheads had got the worst of it, and the police were misled by a false phone message.
'Thatcher is to Blame' ran the headlines of a leftist rag New Line which was being sold on street corners by dishevelled leftovers from the People's March for Jobs. This made little impact, as by now everybody under 40, white or coloured , apparently believes that Mrs Thatcher is to blame for all misfortune, crime, fire and famine, and has put Satan out of a job and presumably on to the dole queue.
More popular were leaflets being handed out by determined teams of Labour Party Young Socialists that read 'Defend Southall'. This cry to arms was being read earnestly by Indians of all ages, from turbaned grey beards to small Sikh boys with handkerchiefs knotted over their heads. All the pamphleteers were white, and the ones I spoke to regarded police, Skinheads and governments as all part of one vast edifice ready to be swept away by Revolution. All applauded the attacks on the police and, like the Indian hotheads they influenced, apparently believed that all the skinheads should have been murdered.
Hambrough Tavern is at the end of the Southall Broadway where I saw that several shop windows were boarded up. One of them, Broadway Pets, bore the slogan 'Nil Desperandum — Open As Usual' which added a nice classical touch to the riot's aftermath. A burly Asian youth patrolled the Broadway, the main shopping street, looking fiery indeed.
I had never been in the Hambrough Tavern, preferring the charms of the Railway Hotel, and now it looks as though I never will. Cordoned off and guarded by two young policemen, it appeared, from what remains I could see, to have been an unlovely building in a variety of styles. The burnt-out domes looked like black shattered eggshells. By the canal nearby, I spoke to two elderly ladies, one in her eighties, who were enjoying the summer evening in front of their terraced cottages. They were quite Pleased that the Hambrough had been burnt down and told me that its discos had attracted hooligans from all over London. Perhaps now they would get a bit of peace. 'When I was a girl this used to be such a lovely neighbourhood', one of them said. Her friend agreed, and to my surprise I found that they were not bemoaning the arrival of Indians, but the pre-war industrialisation of thecountry village they had been born in.
'Across the canal their were orchards and we used to go scrumping apples!' The Younger woman chuckled, gesturing at an Ugly expanse of factory wall. 'Then next door here was the cow-shed, and the farm lay over there where that street is. You would have loved it here then.'
However, I still like present-day Southall, and blame much of the trouble on the mysterious 'Strength Through Oi' movement, which organises skinheads and brought the busload into Southall in the first place. The Leftists have long been working on the emotions of Asian youths and telling them that the police are their enemies. Dusk was approaching, and I made my way back to Serita's family but the shops were Open and the pavements were crowded with huddled Indians holding leaflets. I kept an eye out for slogans on the walls which are often quite revealing. Not many walls were left standing, but on one, to my incredulity, I saw an Ulster Orange slogan 'The Prots, Rule This Town'. 'Anarchy and Peace appeared on another corner. Well, we can have one or the other. Somewhere the concept of the rule of law seems to have got lost, perhaps battered to death by persistent anti-police propaganda. Until we find it, there is little hope for peace in our cities.
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