23 April 2019 marks forty years since the murder of Blair Peach, who was a teacher and anti-racist activist killed by police in Southall, West London while protesting against the far Right’s attack on the town. In the spirit of what Howard Zinn called ‘radical history’, this article recalls the violent events in Southall four decades ago, with a view to discussing their significance for anti-racist practice today and their roots in colonial occupation.
Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and Southall Rights, Southall: the birth of a black community (London: Institute of Race Relations, 1981).
2.
GilroyPaul, ‘The myth of black criminality’, in ScratonPhil, eds, Law, Order and the Authoritarian State: readings in critical criminology (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987), pp. 107–20.
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HallStuartCritcherChasJeffersonTonyClarkeJohnRobertsBrianPolicing the Crisis: mugging, the state, and law and order (London: Macmillan Press, 1978); CarbyHazel, ‘Schooling in Babylon’, in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, eds, The Empire Strikes Back: race and racism in 70s Britain (London: Hutchinson, 1982), pp. 183–211.
5.
FoucaultMichel, Society Must Be Defended (New York: Picador, 2003), p. 46.
6.
HussainNasser, The Jurisprudence of Emergency: colonialism and the rule of law (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2003), p. 118.
7.
Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and Southall Rights, Southall: the birth of a black community, p. 51.
8.
RamamurthyA., ‘The politics of Britain’s Asian youth movements’, Race & Class48, no. 2 (2006), pp. 38–60.
See ‘The past in the present’, Race & Class60, no. 1 (2018).
13.
MacphersonWilliamSir, The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (London: The Stationary Office, 1999), paragraph 6.48.
14.
Macpherson defined institutional racism as something that ‘can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people’, paragraph 6.34. Hence, he saw police racism rooted in police officers, rather than policing policies, stating that ‘neither academic debate nor the evidence presented to us leads us to say or to conclude that an accusation that institutional racism exists in the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] implies that the policies of the MPS are racist. No such evidence is before us. Indeed the contrary is true’, paragraph 6.24.
