As would-be black politicians watched what was happening to communities they came from, they began to push for better black representation. Despite a very white leadership, back then the Labour Party had become the political home for the country’s settled black and brown people. The party didn’t have to work particularly hard for black support; it was about necessity, rather than a broad range of choice. Just twenty years earlier, the Conservative MP Peter Griffiths was elected to represent the Midlands constituency of Smethwick aided by the slogan ‘if you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour’.
Leo Dickson and Marc Wadsworth established the Labour Party’s Black Sections in Vauxhall, south London, in 1983. It was a movement inside the party with the aim of championing black representation in the party (used in a political sense, black meant everyone who was not white). A general election took place in the same year, and a low turnout of black voters saw the Labour Party admit that they needed to do more to attract them. A pamphlet from the Vauxhall Labour Party published in 1984 reveals the thinking behind the formation of the sections, and the fiery debate the sections sparked among the Labour Party membership in the early days of setting up. In the pamphlet, Leo and Marc wrote: ‘Our constituency covers an inner city area (Brixton) where manifestations of racism in Britain today are all pervasive.’51 It wasn’t surprising that the push for black representation in Britain’s left-wing party came from south London – an area of the country that, at that point, was in its third decade of settled African and Caribbean migrants.
By the time Vauxhall Labour Party’s pamphlet was published, a debate was raging in the national press about the legitimacy of the Labour Party’s Black Sections. To gain ground in the party, as well as access to other black members, the section’s organisers went to the party’s executive committee to argue their case. In turn, the executive committee took it upon themselves to notify Labour Party members of all races of a meeting of a ‘black caucus’. Leo and Marc were then put in the uncomfortable position of having to argue the case for black representation at some of the party’s local branches. They were met with largely white opposition.
When the press got hold of party debates on the logistics of it all, it was reported as a race row. In correspondence to the Vauxhall branch in July 1984, the Labour Party’s then leader Neil Kinnock expressed general support towards ending race discrimination in the party, but called the setting up of the Black Sections ‘racially segregationist’.
The Labour Party Conference of 1984 was a significant one. The membership was voting on whether the Black Sections would be formally established in the party’s constitution. Proposing the motion, the late Bernie Grant MP (then a councillor in the London borough of Haringey) said, ‘Our problem is that blacks are not a priority in the Labour and trade union movement at the moment. Black Sections are here to ensure that they become a priority . . . we are concerned because we have been told that our leaders are against Black Sections. One comrade has said that Black Sections will be turned into black ghettoes.’52 Writing a report of the conference in Race Today, activist Darcus Howe spoke of an organised effort to crush the Black Sections: ‘ . . . The argument was a simple one,’ he wrote. ‘Black Sections divide the working class.’53 The motion to formalise the Black Sections didn’t pass, but their organising led to the election of Britain’s first black Members of Parliament in 1987 – Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng and Bernie Grant.
Early one September morning in 1985, police officers broke down the front door of the Groce family in Brixton, south London. The house they burst into was home to thirty-seven-year-old Cherry Groce, and five of her six children. The family heard banging and shouting. Cherry left her eleven-year-old son Lee in her bedroom to find out what was going on. When she went to investigate, she was shot in the chest by a police officer. In a later statement, Cherry said that as she lay on the floor bleeding, police officers continued to shout at her, asking where her oldest son was.54 Testimony from her son confirms this. Speaking to Channel 4 News in 2014, an older Lee recalled those early hours that changed his life. ‘I just saw her on the floor. Lying on the floor. And I saw this policeman standing with the gun. He was basically pointing the gun towards her with his legs apart, and shouting, “Where’s Michael Groce? Where’s Michael Groce?” I was standing up on the bed and I was shouting, “What have you done to my mum?” The policeman turned the gun to me and said, “Shut up!”’55 Michael Groce, twenty-one at the time, was suspected of being involved with an armed robbery. He didn’t live with Cherry when the raid took place.
Cherry was moved to St Thomas’ Hospital that same morning.56 Meanwhile, local people got hold of the news of Cherry’s shooting, and crowds began to gather on Brixton’s streets. To disperse these crowds, police responded by cladding themselves in riot gear. Clashes between the community and the police led to two days of rioting.57 There were burglaries and looting. Dozens of people sustained injuries, and a photojournalist trying to take pictures of the riot was killed.
In 1985, Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm estate was heavily policed. But after what happened in Brixton, all police officers were ordered to leave.58 On 5 October, nearly a week after the Brixton riots, Floyd Jarrett was stopped by the police while driving. His tax disc had expired. Because of a minor discrepancy between his car number plate and tax disc, he was arrested for suspected theft of the car. At Tottenham Police Station, off-duty officer Detective Sergeant Randall suggested to his working colleagues that Floyd’s house be searched for any other stolen goods. Keys to Floyd’s mother’s house were taken without his knowledge, and four officers let themselves in. One of those officers was DC Randall.
Inside they found Floyd’s mother Cynthia, her daughter Patricia, and her small granddaughter. Later that year, Patricia would give evidence to an inquiry about her mother’s death, in which she said, ‘I saw Randall take his left arm and put it around my mother’s shoulder and part of his body pushed her and she fell with her left arm out, breaking the small table.’ DC Randall said that he didn’t make contact with her. The inquiry, drawing on a coroner’s report, decided that DC Randall’s push was not deliberate, but that it had caused Cynthia Jarrett to fall. Either way, she collapsed. Cynthia was taken to North Middlesex Hospital, but died of a heart attack that evening. The same inquest that Patricia gave evidence to delivered a verdict of accidental death.
The following day, a crowd gathered outside Tottenham Police Station, calling for accountability for Cynthia’s death. According to a report from community activist and organiser Stafford Scott,59 DC Randall, the same officer who has since been proved to have been present for all pivotal points of the previous day, appeared at the window of the police station. Blaming Randall, protesters started to throw things at him. In the chaos that followed, over two hundred police officers were injured. A police officer, PC Blakelock, was killed by rioters.
A later inquiry into the events of that night commented: ‘Let us recall what the evidence of the inquest and Magistrates Court revealed: – 1) That the officers who first stopped Floyd Jarrett made computer checks on his car, apparently for no other reason than he was a young black man. 2) That they arrested him and took him into custody on suspicion that his car was stolen which had little of any reasonable basis. 3) That they made a charge against him of assault which was found to be false.’60 The officers’ subsequent claim that the Jarrett family had shouted at them and had become abusive towards them while they were searching the house was also false.