The 1981 Summer of Riots – From London to Manchester

The Huffington Post in 2013. “When we pleaded and screamed and cried that police were abusing us in police cells no one listened. As far as we were concerned [Thatcher] was head of a racist government.” The summer of 1981 was a shockingly violent one, but its crucial to understand that from Brixton to Moss Side the riots and protests were far more complicated than just explosions of criminality and violence. Economic recession, the consequences of Thatcher’s extremely conservative policies and a growing feeling among non-white communities that the police were just another outlet of a fundamentally racist system, were enough to see the country’s streets littered with petrol bombs and riot gear. ]]>