Original subtitles

[♪ pensive music]

[Sybil Phoenix] Children have been burnt,

not West Indians, Black British!

That is what I want said!

They're burning our children!

Why haven't Parliament... said anything?!

[reporter] This is all that remains of the three-story house

where nearly a hundred young West Indians

were celebrating at an all-night birthday party for two young friends.

That night, we were there at the party ...

and for people outside looking in,

I mean, you know, maybe they can just imagine.

[reporter] Just before 6:00 this morning,

the singing and dancing gave way to panic

as flames shot through the upper floors and screaming teenagers

began to leap from the windows.

[Richard Gooding] For what we really, really went through,

that time, to be even sitting here, talking about it, you know, is--is hard.

[young man] It was just horrific, a girl and a boy,

they just sort of fell, right down to a basement.

[Andrew Hastings] The fire, you literally had seconds to get out.

I just couldn't really believe it had all happened,

and it just became a living nightmare.

[Sandra Ruddock] I just remember kids lying on stretchers,

burnt till they were pink.

And the smell of burning flesh; that'll go to my grave.

[reporter] The party began at eleven last night,

then at 6:00, there was a loud bang.

[Wayne Haynes] There was just smoke everywhere,

and then, afterwards, people were telling me that

some white man had thrown a petrol bomb through the window.

[young man] I saw this bloke standing up in the pavement,

then he made this throwing movement with his right hand.

At that point in 1981, color mattered.

We are very dissatisfied with the way the government has behaved,

Parliament has behaved.

[Wayne Haynes] The problem became that

the New Cross fire became an "us and them" affair.

It became a Black and white affair,

but this whole thing was about youngsters being murdered.

[Sandra Ruddock] The fire at 439 New Cross Road,

whether it was deliberately inside, deliberately outside,

I have always believed it was a deliberate act.

[Wayne Haynes] As a kid, you grow, and you have fantasies,

and one of mine was being able to fly.

That's my way out...

and that's what it was.

I think I still have that kiddie dream

of flying off into the sunset and everything being all right one day.

My name is Wayne Haynes.

I was born in London, a place called Lee Green, which is

is very leafy, very '60s suburbia.

Don't ask me how I ended up

being a teenager living in New Cross in what we called ghetto.

[laughs] That was not part of the plan when my mum gave birth.

But my mother and father split up,

my mum had a nervous breakdown, I ended up in care,

for two years, being fostered, with a white family,

who treated me like I was one of their own.

It's life, and you get on with it,

and you learn, and it teaches you that...

people are people.

[children laughing]

[Denise Gooding] My name is Denise Gooding.

I grew up in Camberwell in South East London,

with my mum and my dad and my three brothers.

We lived in a flat.

It was a four-bedroom flat.

It was good, it was nice living in a flat, because it's like a community,

so then you'd all knock on each other's doors, and in those days,

everybody came to our house.

My parents, I think they felt safer knowing that,

as long as we were there, they would know where we are.

[indistinct chatter]

[Ena Gooding] It was an open house in our case, I told them.

If someone keeps comin' and I send them away

and something happened out there, I would blame myself.

So, you know, I always let them in.

[Denise Gooding] Plus, my dad played dominoes.

[laughs] So him and all his friends,

and have family that would be coming on a Friday night and playing dominoes.

So while they are playing the dominoes, we'd be playing music,

because Richard and David and Andrew were all into music.

[♪ upbeat music]

My name's Richard, Richard Gooding.

To be truthful, our house was pretty open with my mum and dad's friends,

so there was always, like, music.

We would just sit in the house, I'd play my vinyls.

What we called "toasting" back then.

[♪ reggae music playing]

And David would be playing the bass guitar.

One of my friends would be singing, and Andrew would be banging...

banging away at this thing, making drums.

I don't know, for some reason, he seemed to like drums, I don't know.

[chuckles]

I was the oldest of the four of us.

David, he's a younger than me.

My brother Andrew, he was four years younger than me,

and my sister, Denise, well, she's always been the baby.

I mean, we're really close, just a typical family.

We didn't have much, but you know, we were really happy.

[♪ reggae music continues]

My name is Sandra Ruddock.

Mum and Dad were the sweetest people ever.

Uh, my dad, was a famous wrestler.

[announcer] In the blue corner, ladies and gentlemen,

King of the Headbutts, from West Africa, Johnny Kwango!

[Sandra Ruddock] He was King of the Headbutts.

He had a really hard head.

It was showmanship. They were there to entertain the public.

-[silly exclamation] -[announcer and crowd chuckle]

[Sandra Ruddock] We lived in Dulwich until I was about 8,

and then we moved to Peckham.

And we had to be careful with the friends that we chose.

Me and my brother were not allowed to get in trouble

with the police or do anything untoward.

My mum always used to say to remember,

"It's your dad's reputation when you go out on the street."

We used to go to work with him. I quite enjoyed that.

I loved going to work with my dad,

I loved it, it was nice. I liked sitting in the front row,

the old biddies going up and shouting, "Leave him alone. Leave him alone!"

I'm going, "Yeah, that's my dad, leave him alone!"

[laughs]

[exclaims]

[announcer and crowd laugh]

[announcer] And he's over the top for Kwango, holding the arms well.

That's got to be it.

[Sandra Ruddock] My mum was just a housewife, really.

They were happily married for 40-odd years,

and I remember at school...

couple of guys, said, "Oh, if there was

a war between Black and whites,

what side of the fence would you be on?"

I was quite upset.

[♪ "Children of the Ghetto" playing]

[indistinct chatter]

In my time at school...

The Telegraph and the Daily Express...

[Wayne Haynes] ...Black boys were not encouraged to do anything.

I was already being told, "You're not going to be... a pilot."

[Richard Gooding] By then, you know,

you would hear a lot of kids at school saying, you know,

"Go back home, get back on your banana boat,

and go back where you come from,"

and things like that.

So, then, you know, I then-- as I got of age,

I started to hear about National Front and knew what they were all about.

[man on speaker] We believe that the only solution

to the rising tide of race trouble in this country

is for a complete stop to all further colored immigration

and for total repatriation of the colored immigrants

and their descendants.

[reporter] The National Front is wooing the white vote

with calls for repatriation and more police.

[man on speaker] So, no chanting, no singing, no banner waving.

You're just pedestrians out for a stroll to give out leaflets, all right?

My name is George Rhoden.

I grew up in a time when racism was prominent.

I know that there were National Front.

I've seen them walking in through town

and they've got their leaflets, they're handing out their leaflets,

the same white middle-aged men.

And they've been stopping immigration right away.

Sending out their messages, driving along in the street.

[man on speaker] The National Front say stop immigration.

Then screaming out obscenities to you.

I'd seen them outside the school, and so anyway, one day,

we're having a laugh after school and things like that...

and I could see a little bit of a flicker of a flame.

And saw a small group of people burning a cross.

We all looked at each other and think, "What they doing?"

Like that, I was probably what, I don't know, 14, 15?

"What they doing?" And then you saw...

the guy with the hood, he was probably the only one with a hood on.

That was the Ku Klux Klan.

I never proved it, but why would you be burning a cross,

and the guy's got a hood on?

Could it just be a little bit of a joke? Don't know.

But scared the shit out of me. [laughs]

[man on speaker] Stop colored immigration.

My name's Mykaell Riley.

I grew up in Handsworth, in Birmingham,

as a first-generation Black British-born individual.

Back in the '70s,

my household, as with many households,

had the Queen adorning the top of the fireplace or something.

And we would complain about society

outside the house.

And our parents would always default

to assuming we'd done something wrong,

and we were ignorant of our own history.

Right? So we're trying to find ourselves.

And then, Bob Marley arrives with a narrative which has given us

an alternative sense of identity.

♪ No sun will shine ♪

♪ In my day today ♪

♪ No sun will shine ♪

♪ The high yellow moon ♪

♪ Won't come out to play ♪

[Mykaell Riley] So we're listening to each record

to get a sense of who we are.

♪ Darkness has covered my light ♪

And songs like "Concrete Jungle"

directly spoke to the challenge of growing up,

to being Black British.

♪ Where is the love to be found? ♪

And this is the Britain that I'm growing up in

with aspirations to... conquer the world through music.

In the background of most, if not all reggae,

it stems from suffering.

♪ Instead of concrete jungle ♪

Reggae is suffering, basically.

And it's truth as well. [chuckles]

♪ Concrete jungle ♪

♪ Man, you got to do your best ♪

My name is Alex Wheatle.

I grew up without any family whatsoever.

My mother could not look after me, so...

I was placed into care

and so, I was totally detached from my culture.

Until I went to Brixton.

♪ I know I am bound here ♪

I mean, I was growing to love Reggae music,

from even before I moved to Brixton,

and to hear it, everywhere,

it seemed to be every street corner.

I remember Soferno 'B'.

I remember Desmond's Hip City.

♪ Never known what sweet caress is ♪

I remember Bob Marley's track "Concrete Jungle."

I had very much low esteem.

I had to fight against that almost on a daily basis,

to reclaim my identity,

and Reggae music helped in that process.

[♪ upbeat percussion]

My name's Andy, and I was a friend of Paul Ruddock's.

I first became aware of Paul due to the music.

He was playing his radio quite loud.

[over radio] Capital Capital Capital... record break.

[♪ George McCrae: "Rock Your Baby"]

He played "Rock Your Baby" by George McRae.

I didn't know he was Black for the first month.

Couldn't actually see him, he couldn't see me.

'Cause we were both in traction.

I had to look up to the ceiling because

it's the most comfortable place to rest my head.

I had a severe motorcycle accident,

and found out that he had a motorcycle accident.

Anyway, the rooms were adjacent.

He used to play music-- Capital Radio at the time.

I used to play music, Radio One.

But it was really hot, summer of 1976.

So we had the windows open, the doors open,

and we used to like shouting to each other,

"Did you like that song?"

It was a bit of a competition, really.

We had two different stations blaring out the music.

The nurses used to come into the room and say, "Right, stop. Stop!"

And then they would walk off,

and then we'd turn the radios up again.

[funky rock]

I played him "Play that Funky Music White Boy" by Wild Cherry.

I'm not sure that Paul actually liked it.

He went, "Mm." [laughs]

He was quite interesting to talk to, and confident.

But he used words that I had never heard before.

He used the word "cool," and "Oh, that's cool."

And, "Oh, what does that mean?" You know?

[Wayne Haynes] When I came back to London,

and they had moved my mum to New Cross,

we lived on the estate with a bad reputation,

Milton Court Estate.

That's the beginning of ghetto.

We called ourselves the "Ghetto posse,"

but the police created that ghetto where...

the way how you policed it and handled it,

you've locked us off into our own little circle.

Back in our day, the police used to pick you up as a youngster.

They're not phoning your parents as soon as they pick you up.

They take you down the police station, or they take you in the back of the van,

and they kick hell out of you...

and then they just let you back out on the street.

[♪ reggae music playing]

[man shouts]

My name is Peter Bleksley.

By the late '70s, at the end of my 18 months in the cadets,

I became the uniformed police constable,

and I'm told I'm going to Peckham.

I learned very quickly that it had a...

considerable Afro-Caribbean population.

I've lived in Bexley Heath, I've been trained in Hendon.

I'm a teenager.

Black faces I think frightened me.

I... I wasn't familiar.

And I pretty quickly learned that there was

a lot of racism within the police force.

People were fitted up with bags of drugs,

people were fitted up with offensive weapons.

What's going on?

[policeman] Sit in the back of my motor and I'll tell you.

And so often, they were young Black people.

When I'm walking on the streets at night,

they just come and stop me.

They start picking on me and asking me where I'm going, where do I live?

And if you don't answer, you find yourself in the back of the car.

[young man] True.

[reporter] In Brixton, there's been a 25% increase in violent crime,

things like robbery and muggings.

Well, from leaving training school...

[reporter] The dilemma has been how to respond to repeated calls

for more Black policemen.

In uniform, it's really... nerve-racking.

[reporter] But those Blacks who do sign up

are often seen as having joined the other side.

I was interested in policing from a really early age,

but at 16, I didn't know what to expect.

And, uh, when I told my parents,

they looked at each other, and you could see that

there was fear in their eyes.

They knew what the police were about, they knew that they were racist.

They knew.

But they never, ever said anything.

They-- all they did was supported me,

When I told my friends, everybody just stood there looking at me.

And, one of them just stepped forward,

and he just said, you know, "Are you fuckin' mad?!"

He said, "Boy, you're going to become a traitor."

He looked me up and down, "You're going to become a traitor."

And I'm like a little bit shocked at his reaction.

[reporter] Are things between you and the police getting better or worse?

-[young man] Worse. -Well, I'd say worse.

I said to the policeman that you're not supposed to be parked

on a double yellow line,

so I carried on walking up Leyland Road,

and then he just followed me slowly with his car.

And then he was calling me "Black bastard" and...

we should go back to our own country and all this and that.

[Wayne Haynes] These are the lifestyles of what we were living back in those days.

We used to get picked up just for loitering.

[George Rhoden] So my first day, on duty, as I walked in,

it just went quiet, and I see everybody looking.

Can you produce your form numbers, please?

So the sergeant said, "Right. PC300,"

which was my number, "Yeah, you will be with PC so-and-so."

And all I heard, "You must be fucking joking."

And you are taught to take your radio and do your signal checks.

Like, "Charlie Victor from PC 300, can I have a signal check, please?"

And then they're supposed to come back, and all I got was

a barrage of monkey noises that came through that radio.

[reporter] The Evelyn Estate in South East London

is typical of the urban battlegrounds

in which the muggers and their victims meet.

Here, the unemployed youngsters'

impulsive need for cash can easily be gratified.

[woman] I put the purse my shopping bag

and I came round to the lift and pressed the button,

and as I did so, I turned round and this dark fellow followed me in,

and I put my hand in my bag to get my purse out

and it wasn't there to take it out.

[reporter] That old lady, the fear she and her friends have,

is the fear of being mugged,

and it's been associated with the new generation

of Black teenagers in the capital.

Mugging, it was just seen as being exclusively Black,

as though it had been imported into the U.K. by Black people.

And the victims were white women,

and so it became very very emotive.

[Russell Profitt] I think as well, one's got to say

that there is a certain element of racism.

Now I hope that we move away from that, and as Black people...

[Russell Profitt] My name is Russell Profitt,

and during the late '70s, I was working

in primary education,

and I also was a local councilor on Lewisham Council.

It really was very, very difficult to shift the public perception,

away from the issue of muggings, as such.

It was plastered all over the local newspapers.

Incidents were happening everywhere.

When you looked at the facts, that was not the case,

and it was a shorthand way, basically,

of saying to young Black people,

"You will be criminalized."

[man] As the majority of police are white,

might not like Black people, you know what I mean?

They're always on about, saying Black youths mugging old women and all that,

so that sort of brings out prejudice against us.

Who's making a complaint? Who's making a complaint?

At the time, the Black community found themselves

the scapegoats for a lot of the ills then taking place.

I think a lot of is scapegoat politics.

Um, I think that people seem to think that Blacks are easy targets.

There was a sort of a-an arrest spree--

21 young people arrested on suspicion of muggings.

[Syd Shelton] My name's Syd Shelton.

I was both an activist and a photographer.

The Metropolitan Police, at 5:00 in the morning,

smashed the doors down of 21 houses

and arrested 21 young people.

I heard about it because I was asked to photograph the man

leading the campaign for the freedom of the Lewisham 21.

And some of the people were little more than children.

But it was what inspired the National Front

to set up what they called the Anti-mugging March,

which was scheduled for the 13th of August, 1977.

They proposed to march through New Cross and Lewisham.

[Russell Profitt] The National Front decided that that would be

their way of showing that they were

clearing out the neighborhoods.

Now is the crunch.

It's going to be a test of stamina,

it's going to be test of nerves.

We have got to institute a swift and immediate program

of humane repatriation of all colored immigrants,

their descendants, and their dependents

since the passing of the British Nationality Act in 1948.

[interviewer] Including those born here?

Absolutely, yes. Including those born here.

The fact that they are born here doesn't make them British.

There is a community that you're part of that sees you as alien,

that sees you as other, that sees you as momentary,

and we're looking back at our parents,

and we're thinking "Hold on a second, we were born here.

We are British.

How can you be applying the same mentality, the same mindset to us?"

My generation, the first generation U.K. Black,

refuses the National Front,

the British Government, and anybody else's calls for repatriation.

How can you send me back from where I came from?

I was born here. I'm going back where?

[Andrew Hastings] Well, I was anti-National Front anyway.

We were living in a multicultural society.

I found it was different, it was new,

but other people were scared of that.

I used to go and stay at Paul's house,

439 New Cross Road and...

he invited me up there because there was gonna be

a National Front march through Lewisham.

[reporter] The march is due to start here, at Clifton Rise.

Most residents say they'll be staying at home,

the odd houses already boarded up,

and the police have advised everyone to keep away from Clifton Rise.

This was like, about two nights before the march was due.

Paul said, "Let's go and get a kebab."

Went in the kebab shop, and this white chap started racially abusing him.

So Paul picked him up off his feet,

and he just threw him out into the street.

And this guy was then staggering up the road,

and then another guy came flying out the pub,

and he had a crash helmet on, motorcycle crash helmet on,

and he went straight up to Paul, head-butted him,

and then he ran back into the pub.

With this, Paul ran down to his house,

and he'd come back with a great big knife, huge knife,

and I said "Where's you gonna go with that?"

He said, "I'm going in there after him." I said "No, no, no, come on."

Then I realized, you know, the tension.

There was this sort of tension there.

[♪ music intensifies]

The most difficult policing events for me to deal with

was the National Front demonstrations.

You get on the coach to get down there, and you would have officers

from different stations that were all joined together,

and they call it "coming on aid."

And at that time, we were wearing long rain macs,

so an officer went to put on his long rain mac,

and inside his long rain mac

was a National Front badge.

And I looked at him, and he just looked at me,

put the thing on and walked off.

He didn't want to hide it, he just put it, and he walked off,

and I went, "Wow!"

[chanting] The National Front is a Nazi front!

[Wayne Haynes] The problem was the police allowed these people

to march through predominantly Black areas...

knowing what it's gonna cause.

[man on speaker] We'll be moving off in just a minute!

[Wayne Haynes] So, they ain't coming past here.

We ain't havin' it.

You had the teenagers--

they're not having it because we were born here.

Our parents came out, our big brothers and sisters came out,

Darcus Howe...

Everybody came out because

we were not going to be intimidated in our own homes.

[Syd Shelton] I know the picture I took of Darcus Howe

standing on the toilet block on Clifton Rise.

He gave a speech which was basically, "They shall not pass."

We knew there were scores to be settled that day,

we knew it was gonna be a big confrontation and a fight,

and we must stand up to this intimidation of the community.

[♪ rousing music]

[protesters shouting]

[George Rhoden] So, it was a National Front march...

Screaming obscenities and screaming racist language

across my bowls to the other side.

The National Front is the white man's fight!

[crowd] Join the National Front!

I'm now protecting the National Front people

from being attacked by my own.

[shouting]

You know, there is pushing and shoving and pushing and shoving...

[shouting]

"Why are you protecting them?! Why aren't you protecting me?!

"You Judas, you traitor!"

I was like-- I was mixed up.

Nazis!

[shouting]

[Wayne Haynes] All white people ain't the same,

just like all Black people ain't the same.

And you got a whole load of English people...

Bastards!

[Wayne Haynes] ...they don't care whether you are Black or you're white.

[chanting] National Front! National Front!

[Wayne Haynes] So, you had a lot of Black, white, pink, brown,

out there fighting racists.

These are people who are chanting, "If they're Black, send them back."

These people have to be confronted and defeated.

[clamoring]

And it was very much-- almost like a medieval battle.

I remember very well, somebody opening the windows

and putting two big speakers there and putting Bob Marley's

"Get Up Stand Up" on as loud as they could.

[♪ Bob Marley: "Get Up Stand Up"]

[♪ Bob Marley: "Get Up Stand Up" continues]

[Haynes] During the Battle of Lewisham, as everyone likes to call it now,

for the first time we felt empowered to do something about these racists,

and people started fighting back.

[reporter] The crowd which had been held back was angry.

They broke through the police cordon,

and then another battle between them and the police flared up.

Three and a half thousand police, the most ever seen in London,

have been drafted in for today's violence.

[♪ Bob Marley: "Get Up Stand Up" continues]

[Wayne Haynes] And then you started seeing police on horses,

rushing down towards Peckham way.

[♪ Bob Marley: "Get Up Stand Up" continues]

[Syd Shelton] They put their entire mounted division,

a quarter of the entire Metropolitan Police.

They also used riot shields for the first time in mainland Britain.

So, they came for a fight.

[Wayne Haynes] The police were attacking us.

[♪ Bob Marley: "Get Up Stand Up" continues]

You couldn't attack us. There's too many of us.

For the first time ever,

when the police started fighting, we were fighting the police.

[♪ Bob Marley: "Get Up Stand Up" continues]

[reporter] At one stage, the crowd surrounded Lewisham Police Station

and set fire to a motorcycle belonging to a member of the press.

[Wayne Haynes] '77 was the year

that the racists realized they had a fight.

[man] You know, it really shows what people think,

just shows how much feeling there is against the National Front.

The majority of people are against them, yeah.

I just think the National Front want someone to blame...

[young man] Pick on. Someone to pick on.

...for what's happening to the country at the moment.

[Wayne Haynes] About three or four months later,

Moonshot gets burnt down.

[reporter] On December the 14th, when the Moonshot project

was smoked out of the old mission hall in Pagnall Street, Deptford,

many Black people in the area thought they smelled racialism at work.

Moonshot, it was one of the places where

a lot of Black people used to go and congregate again,

and then, six seven months after that,

I remember the Albany

got burnt down.

[reporter] The Albany Theatre was gutted by fire.

The blaze came only a week

after the combination had staged a series of plays

aimed at fostering racial harmony.

People from New Cross went to Moonshot.

People from Deptford went to Albany.

I believe that was a backlash of the Battle of Lewisham.

Petrol bombs were getting thrown all--

they were taking white spirit and spraying it through letterboxes,

when your house in darkness, and drop a match through.

Well, that's your exit blocked.

We live in flats, we live in masionettes.

What you going to do, jump out-- jump out the window?

That became a thing after hours,

that used to happen around Deptford and Lewisham and Peckham

and places like Brixton.

[reporter] Last October, there was an attempt

to burn down the home of Mr. Jamal Singh and his family.

[Russell Profitt] It just was quite frightening.

Racial incidents would occur,

and none of these incidents that happened

led to any arrests.

There was almost like a feeling that it didn't matter.

[Wayne Haynes] I've never heard of anybody getting arrested

for doing one of those firebombs.

Between '77 and '81, I never heard of not one arrest.

My name is Leila Hassan, and in 1981,

I was a member of the Race Today Collective,

based in Brixton, and we were aware

many of the police officers were National Front sympathizers.

So when the fascists attacked a lot of book shops,

we had a big campaign against the racist attacks

against radical and Black book shops

that was mounted by the fascists at that time.

[John Larose] The National Front is seeking

to terrorize us out of existence,

but we recognize the state has a certain responsibility

and we will bring it to the attention

because if you were to arrange self-defense groups here,

you can rest assured that the police would be attacking us.

And not... and not the fascists.

In the late '70s,

that tension was increasing across all the major cities

where you have a sizable Black community and Black youth.

The state, the police, the media was telling you,

"You're not from here, you don't belong here.

Go home."

And so, your sense of what is possible

is severely challenged.

[♪ funky music]

I was in the band Steel Pulse,

a small band in Birmingham.

Our songs were a direct response to the political backdrop of the day.

♪ Walking along just kicking stones ♪

♪ Minding my own business ♪

♪ I come face to face With my foe ♪

♪ Disguised in violence From head to toe ♪

And so, "Ku Klux Klan" was

a direct conversation, I think, with racism.

♪ To let me go Was not dem intention ♪

We thought that these lynchings were happening

by the police and by racist thugs.

♪ It's the Ku Klux Klan ♪

[Mykaell Riley] Myself and Alfonzo, the other vocalist onstage,

we wore the hoods, and I thought, We want to leave you in no doubt

of this message.

And up until that point, our audience,

our biggest audience, was punks.

So we were wearing Ku Klux Klan hoods on stage to a punk audience who,

I think in the first few times we donned the hoods,

the audience just went silent.

And outside our gigs is the National Front,

selling their papers,

and saying, "Uh, it's not about you mate."

[laughs]

♪ Hello, Maggie ♪

♪ Well, hello, Maggie ♪

♪ Now you're really On the road to... ♪

Terrific! You can do it on your own.

Britain's at a turning point,

and I believe that more trade-- yes, do clap.

[laughter and applause]

[reporter] Do you see the Tory accusation

that Labour has dragged Britain down as a winning strategy?

[man] I think what will decide the electorate's choice will be,

Under which party do you think things will get least bad?

There. What one pound would buy in groceries

under the Tory government in my right, blue hand.

[reporter] From now on, both major parties

will field their leaders more or less daily.

[interviewer] I'd like to talk about some of the issues.

I'd like to start on immigration.

We must hold out the prospect of a clear end to immigration.

With the backdrop of

national politicians attempting to exploit

the differences between the communities...

People are really rather afraid that this country

might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.

With Margaret Thatcher,

Thatcher talked about swamping the culture of the Brits.

That if there's any fear that it might be swamped,

people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in.

I saw Margaret Thatcher, with her statements

about alien culture swamping this country,

and, personally, I hated her.

What is she talking about?

In my view, that's one thing that's driving some people

to the National Front.

They don't agree with the objectives of the National Front,

but they say that at least they're talking about some of the problems.

[Leila Hassan] We produced a special issue of Race Today.

We understood that if a British politician could get up and say that,

then really, our lives were going to be made much, much more difficult.

[reporter] The troubles began early

as many of Southall's 30,000 Asians blocked off every road to the town hall.

National Front bastards!

[reporter] The National Front was smuggled into the Town Hall through a back street.

Go back home!

Police arrested 300 people, and 40 people received hospital treatment.

Blair Peach, a London teacher and father of two children,

was hit so hard on the head that he died.

Opposite the police station, a small group gathered to protest

at the circumstances of Blair Peach's death.

When I first heard about it, I thought Blair Peach was Black!

Because everyone was so animated about that.

The general discussion was, "Oh, my God,

they're killing us on the street now."

[reporter] The Southall riots happened while Mrs. Thatcher was out of London.

But at her first stop today in Huddersfield,

she immediately talked about what she called

"last night's tragic events."

We totally condemn the racial policies of the National Front

and we have no sympathy whatsoever with any extremist group.

[interviewer] But you will then have a tough new immigration policy

should you come to power.

I have described what it is.

How you describe what I say is a matter for you.

Hearing what Thatcher was saying, it felt, because I was born here,

that, um, I'm not wanted.

[reporter] Here comes the Prime Ministerial Rover,

bearing now Mrs. Thatcher.

[Alex Wheatle] And this particular government doesn't want us,

and it felt like they wanted to purge us from the streets,

even though we were born here,

even though we were as British as anybody.

[Sandra Ruddock] Paul's family home was 439 New Cross Road.

It's a three-story Georgian terraced house with a basement,

on a main road.

Paul worked in the evenings, um, in a pub in Peckham,

which my brother worked in,

and he introduced me to Paul--

we just hit it off straight away from then on.

He was fun, free, outgoing.

Everybody that met him said, "He's such a lovely guy,

he's easy to get on with."

I didn't really know much about Paul meeting Sandra,

but he did tell me he'd met this girl, and her name was Sandra,

and he said, "I'm gonna marry her."

[Sandra Ruddock] He asked me to meet him in the pub

one evening after work.

Sittin' at the bar, he said, "I've got something really personal to ask you:

Will you marry me?"

I looked at him, I went, "You're joking." I went, "Yeah, okay."

I didn't think he was serious. [chuckles]

[reporter] Lady Diana was saying nothing about her weekend with Prince Charles

to the assembled press corps.

[reporter] Lady Diana's nickname at school was "Shy Di."

-Is she shy? -[woman] I believe she is slightly shy.

So few people seem to know anything about her.

I'm not going to say anything. Oh, sorry.

Prince Charles did give us a hint himself.

He said we wouldn't have to wait too long.

Oh, careful! [chuckles]

[Sandra Ruddock] These are my wedding photos of mine and Paul.

We got married the 19th of July, 1980.

That's a nice photo. I like that one of me and him.

It was a lovely day.

He was blowing in my face in this photo.

[laughs]

[reporter] Lady Diana is a good choice,

and her father, her uncle Lord Fermoy, and others

have even vouched for her virginity.

[man] She fits the bill in a number of ways, yes.

Obviously, she's going to be bearing kings of England.

Sandra was expecting. She already had a daughter, called Vivien.

That's my Vivien and Paul.

And he was quite excited about

having a baby and taking the responsibility.

[Sandra Ruddock] After he had his motorbike accident,

he was told that he might not ever be able to father children, so...

when I found out I was pregnant with Janine,

he was actually over the moon. He couldn't believe it.

That's a picture with his sister Yvonne.

She had the nicest personality you could ever dream of.

Yvonne had actually said to me and Paul,

"I'm going to ask mum if I can have a birthday party.

What do you think mum will say?"

Paul said, "We'll see what we can do."

Her friend Angela was actually 18

the same day she was 16, and they were friends at school,

so could they combine to two birthdays?

So... that's what they did.

[Richard Gooding] Yvonne was my brother's girlfriend, my brother David.

Yvonne used to frequent our house.

[♪ reggae music]

When she used to come round, we used to play tunes in the house.

She liked lovers rock. [chuckles]

I remember David giving her some record, called "At the Club."

[♪ Victor Romero Evans: "At the Club"]

That tune was kicking at the time, a Victor Romero... tune.

[♪ Victor Romero Evans: "At the Club" continues]

David and Yvonne, they got together not long before the party,

because I remember, it was because...

they were seeing each other, is why I was allowed to go.

I remember her standing in the kitchen, she said to my mum,

"Could Denise come to the party? Can Denise and Andrew come to the party?"

She was friendly with Andrew and Denise.

"Remember, you have to come to my party."

And if you don't come to my party, don't talk to me anymore.

You know, and they were talking about the party...

they were talking about it all the time.

I declare Christmas season... open!

[cheering]

[Andrew Hastings] I heard about the party at Christmas.

I was gonna stay Christmas with Paul,

and he said, "Oh, I am going up to Rugby.

Can you bring my mum up?"

So a couple of days later, I picked his mum up,

drove her up to Rugby as well.

Armza Ruddock. I was introduced to her as Aunty Gee.

But, yeah, Armza Ruddock.

She was the mother of Yvonne Ruddock and Paul Ruddock.

Aunty Gee's family in Rugby lived three doors away from us,

so when she came to, uh, mum's side of the family,

they came there, and they must have said, "Well, your dad's side of family

the Ruddocks, actually live three doors up down the road,"

so when they came and knocked on our door, and went "Oh, my God!"

They told us about the party, "Oh, we're having a party next year.

Do you want to come?"

We were getting to know each other-- the whole party was like to

get to know each other's family because we didn't know each other before.

We didn't know we had that family in London.

[Wayne Haynes] My sound system played at the party,

so we knew about the party from the time that they started to put it together.

I wanted to have something to identity for myself so...

me and my friends at school, we created the sound.

Steve, Gerry, and myself,

we fudged this thing together.

Steve Collins, we used to call him Brillo at school.

He had a great big afro, and it was just wiry and...

Steve's dad, a guy they used to call Sir Collins,

he had a sound system.

He gave us our first set of bass boxes.

Gerry Francis, again, he was into his music.

So, either me and Steve, or me and Gerry,

or Gerry and Steve were always together.

If you lived in an area, and you was a Black person,

you knew the Black people.

Yvonne's a well-known, well-liked person.

if we...

give her one of the best parties of the year,

at the beginning of the year,

then everybody else gonna want to employ us for the rest of the year,

because Yvonne's party was--

"Yeah, that was the party!"

On the day of the party,

I remember my brother Andrew.

I remember taking him to this barber shop,

and, you know, he had this afro haircut.

He was so pleased, you know,

'cause the hair was ready now, you know what I mean?

And my sister Denise, Denise was quite excited--

I remember her in a suit she had on.

Mate, I was mad excited. [laughs]

I didn't know really what to expect of the party.

I just knew... I'm going to party!

[♪ funky music]

[doorbell rings]

[Sandra Ruddock] We got there just after about half past eight.

Everybody was running around,

and people were being served drinks, and...

food was being cooked.

My mother in-law made curry goat, rice and peas, chicken.

My daughter Viv was in every room, everywhere.

[Richard Gooding] When we went to the party,

I mean, I dropped them off there first.

I think it must have been about half nine or something.

I mean, it was a really nice house.

I mean, you could see that the house was really well looked after.

[Andrew Hastings] The party was on the first floor,

the front room on the ground floor, and the kitchen is one big room,

and it's got concertina wooden doors that used to slide open.

But that evening, the doors were closed.

The front room was special.

We hardly ever used the front room.

Where the party was, was actually my mother-in-law's bedroom,

so that was all cleared out.

All the furniture was down in the basement,

and you had to come to the kitchen

if you wanted a drink or you wanted to eat food.

[♪ lovers rock playing]

[Wayne Haynes] We had the whole thing. The crowd was going, the vibes was nice,

the music was right.

[♪ music continuing]

I remember thinking this party is amazing,

because obviously, I'm used to my brothers playing music,

so I knew all the tunes.

Do you know what I mean? All the lovers rock tunes.

[♪ music continuing]

[George Ruddock] My sister was dancing with this guy all night called Frank,

and they were rubbing up, scrubbing up, as you want to call it, all night long.

And I'm thinking, "What's he doing with my sister?!"

But... it's a party.

You know, it's funny, music can tell the story of my life.

[♪ Jean Adebambo: "Paradise"]

The track for '81 is definitely Jean Adebambo, "Paradise."

[♪ Jean Adebambo: "Paradise" continues]

At the time, Jean Adebambo's song was like one of those songs,

it was one of those big lovers rock tunes.

One of my favorite tunes, my girlfriend's favorite tune at the time.

My girlfriend at the time, Rosaline Henry,

I remember, when we played that tune, she took the microphone

and she was singing it like,

it's the man-feeling-great 'cause she's looking at me singing,

and she's got the mike in her hand, so like...

She had a good voice. She could sing.

[♪ Jean Adebambo: "Paradise" continues]

[Richard Gooding] I was in and out of that party

'cause, remember, the party was a 16-year-old's party,

right, and we were like 18, 19.

But one or two of my friends were there,

and I remember standing on the stairs.

I remember I was talking to Lloyd Hall for quite some time.

[Wayne Haynes] The party was great, it was a good party.

You had generations coming at different times,

so you had the younger ones who were there from the beginning.

And then you had the older ones

who were coming in for Angela's side of the party,

and they're coming in at like, 12:00.

So, loads of people were there.

You had to squeeze past people going up the stairs.

[Andrew Hastings] I stayed downstairs most of the evening.

The older adults were there, in the kitchen.

They were having their sort of own little party in the kitchen.

Paul was just generally keeping an eye on

who was coming into the house.

[Sandra Ruddock] It got to about half past three,

and my Viv was really overtired,

and I took Viv home.

I don't know no more till

about 8:30, when my door went.

[Denise Gooding] Richard had come a couple of times to pick us up,

but this'll tell you how good the party was, we were not ready.

The first time he came, we were like, "No, we're having too much fun."

Second time, "We're having too much fun." [laughs]

And then when he came the last time,

I couldn't find my bag.

[Richard Gooding] Denise and Andrew were quite close together

and doing a lot of stuff together,

so I didn't really feel that there was anything wrong.

Remember, David was there as well and...

we weren't new to the Ruddock house.

[Andrew Hastings] You know, it was getting about

four, five o'clock in the morning, that sort of time,

so I thought, "Oh, I'll just go and sit in the front room."

And...

I think a group of girls came in, about five girls.

I remember them like asking if I had a cigarette or something...

Andrew was just sitting there.

I think he was a bit tired...

but mainly we was just sitting there, just... talking.

And then they left, and I thought, "Right, I'll get up."

[Wayne Haynes] At 5:30 in the morning,

I could still see people dancing.

It wasn't just a couple of people in the room.

We still had a lot of people in there.

The last track I remember being played was

"Kingdom Rise and Kingdom Fall" by Wailing Souls.

"Kingdom Rise and Kingdom Fall."

[♪ Wailing Souls: "Kingdom Rise and Kingdom Fall"]

[Andrew Hastings] In the kitchen, Paul's mum, Armza,

out the blue, she just said, she said something to Lesley Morris,

"Go and check on... go and check..."

And he went out the room, and he come back.

Said, "Look at this."

[fire roars]

The ground floor front room was totally ablaze.

People ran out into the street.

I remember... I think it was Paul's mum,

shouting up the stairs, "Fire, fire!"

The window exploded.

Bang! And it was like, glass flying everywhere, you know.

You had to run into the road, and Paul was next to me.

He said to me, "Where's Yvonne? Have you seen Yvonne?"

I said, "No. I think she's still in there, Paul."

With that, he said, "Stay here," and he just ran straight into the house.

[♪ Wailing Souls: "Kingdom Rise and Kingdom Fall" continues]

I started to smell something, like burning,

but something getting blown, an amplifier blowing

or something was a regular occurrence.

And I remember saying to Steve Collins like,

"Can you smell that? Can you smell that?"

and he was like, "Yeah, it smells like something burning.

Let me go and have a look behind the case,"

where we keep all the amplifiers.

I think Gerry was probably still in the record box,

searching for the next tune sort of thing.

So, I said, "You know what? I'm going to go and get a drink. You want something?

And that was it, and I went off. That's the last time I saw everybody.

[♪ Wailing Souls: "Kingdom Rise and Kingdom Fall" continues]

I've come down the first set of stairs, turned the balcony,

and when I saw the smoke, I turned round and ran back upstairs.

I remember going back into the room and shouting "Fire..."

for which I believe, Paul had been in the room already...

[♪ Wailing Souls: "Kingdom Rise and Kingdom Fall" continues]

We were in the party, and Paul came in...

and Paul came in, and he shouted fire.

And, it must have been some kind of light,

whether it was the fire behind him or whatever,

like a silhouette on him.

And when I looked at him properly, you could see the soot on his hair.

You could see stuff in his hair,

and that was the last time I saw him.

But that would mean that Paul either passed me coming up the stairs

or passed me coming down the stairs.

Don't remember that.

[♪ music ends abruptly]

Everything's gone out, there's no electric, I can't see anybody,

I don't know what's going on.

And all hell broke loose.

And people started to panic, right, so even when you'd get to a window,

people are pushing you back, and there's panic.

What I-- what I remember and what I saw

was like watching an old Charlie Chaplin movie,

a black-and-white Charlie Chaplin movie,

where you know everything looks like it's going in slow motion,

but it's going really fast.

Like you got people screaming and shouting,

and you got people going to try and climb out a window

and other people pulling them back...

[stammers]

The whole place just went mad.

And I remember it getting really hot.

And it was coming up.

Heat was coming up from underneath,

and it was just getting hotter, and you know what...

I remember, standing there, doing this, thinking that I am wiping--

Sweating, wiping sweat.

And... turns out later on,

that that sweat was actually my skin

that was peeling off of my face like that.

It felt like it was... like, I'd got sand all over my face.

And the more I wiped it, the more the skin kept coming off of my face.

I remember when I put my head out the window,

I was getting burnt.

and in the confusion, I am thinking, "Why am I getting burnt?"

And I will never forget, the floor felt spongy to me.

It felt spongy.

I was at the top of the house, and it's a three-story house.

So I was at the top in the back

when I heard someone shout fire

from downstairs, as they were running up the stairs.

Um, we could hear someone shouting, "Fire, fire, fire!"

But it all happened so quickly.

Yvonne started to run downstairs, shouting for her mum.

David then ran after her,

and I looked at Andrew, David went that way,

it just seemed like seconds before it was just thick black smoke.

And you can't see anything, you can't breathe,

and you can't feel-- it is the thickest smoke.

I remember...

there was about four people just standing up on that wall,

just leaning, like in shock.

They didn't know where to go, what to do, they're just standing there.

And I remember turning like that, looking at them, looking at the window,

and the chaos and the mayhem that was going on

of people trying to get out of the window.

And I just grabbed my coat back on, and just opened the door and...

and went running through the fire and tried to get upstairs...

and I just remember going...

feeling my way through the smoke.

Falling over, tripping up, scared,

really, really, really scared.

The heat from the smoke is so intense,

I can remember feeling like,

I'm being pushed, you know, like we're all trying to fight

to get to-to this one window.

I'm only 11, and I remember thinking that...

I haven't even lived my life, do you know what I mean?

I have not even lived my life and now this is it, do you know what I mean?

There was some guys trapped in--

I think, they must have run up to the top floor,

and they were having trouble getting the windows open.

And I can remember these guys kicking the windows out

and literally taking a running jump,

coming flying out the windows.

And they had to jump, because...

there were railings,

and they... they obviously realized they had to...

[whooshing sound]

[George Ruddock] I jumped...

out of the second floor window.

But, um...

I remember I crawled onto the ledge...

the ledge, and I thought to myself, "You can't jump out,"

because, at the front of the house, you had--you had spikes

the front of the gates...

you had spikes.

So if you jumped out, you could have landed on the spikes,

so I just jumped out and jumped straight down.

I only hurt my arm.. 'cause my arm,

couldn't come down.

That's all I remember, my arm was up there

and that was it, I went to the hospital,

with my arm up there for some reason.

But that was my only injury I had,

so I was like a little cat.

Desmond Brown was like a cat. He got out there.

So we were lucky, where other people...

weren't so lucky. [sniffles]

I think I was trying to obviously,

navigate my way out of this window when

last thing you know, I'm being lifted.

It's like I was coming down the drainpipe with somebody

and then, halfway down, I heard someone say,

that's the last thing I can remember, someone saying,

"You're on your own now."

And then, I remember falling and hitting on my back.

Eventually, I got to the top of the stairs.

I remember falling over twice.

And, um, when I got to the window,

there was already a guy on the window ledge.

He climbed out...

and I went right behind him.

[chuckles] I was like, "Whatever is happening, I ain't dying."

I went straight behind him, and I went out the window,

stood on the window ledge...

feeling for a drainpipe now, 'cause my eyes was hurting...

my-- everything is just going mad, I'm...

adrenaline's flowing, I can't think straight...

I found myself a drainpipe...

grabbed hold of it, and started climbing down.

I think my head just about got below

the level of what would be the window ledge.

And the drainpipe just pulled away from the wall.

I ended up falling down

and going straight through the roof of an old outside toilet.

[crash]

I've landed on my right leg.

And my right leg ended up in my chest.

I had smashed my hip into a hundred odd pieces,

broke my thigh, broke my shin, smashed my foot up.

I see Yvonne jump out the window.

She looked badly injured.

I was getting really worried, I thought Paul hasn't come out.

[sirens blare]

The fire brigade seemed to turn up in minutes.

The guy jumped out.

I don't know why he come over to me, he come running over to me,

and he said, "Is there anyone in there?"

And I said, "Yeah, it's full of young kids."

And they went straight in.

And I thought, "Oh, thank God for that."

So I was then waiting there outside the house

in the middle of the road,

and I see Paul being brought out on a ladder.

They used the ladder as a stretcher.

They put him straight in the back of the ambulance.

They said, "Get in, go in with him."

[exhales] When I came to, there was a person either side of me,

and I remember one of them was saying, "Help me!"

But I was thinking...

all I kept thinking about was, "Where are my brothers?

What's happened to David, what's happened to Andrew?

Where are they?"

No one could tell me anything. Do you know what I mean?

It was just horrible.

My sister, Claudette Ruddock,

before the fire started,

she saw somebody in a white car,

throw something in the house.

So, a lot of people believed it was a... definitely a racist fire,

a fire attack on that party.

That's what they believed, and all of us believed that.

A hundred percent. Well, why wouldn't you?

[♪ somber music]