Scarman and After. Essays Reflecting on Lord Scarman's Report, the Riots and their Aftermath

287 Pages·1984·18.26 MB·English

by  John Benyon

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Scarman and After
Essays reflecting on Lord S carman's Report
3
the riots and their aftermath
Edited by
JOHN BENYON
with an epilogue by
LORD SCARMAN
PERGAMON PRESS
OXFORD NEW YORK TORONTO SYDNEY PARIS FRANKFURT
U.K. Pergamon Press Ltd., Headington Hill Hall,
Oxford OX3 0BW, England
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FEDERAL REPUBLIC Pergamon Press GmbH, Hammerweg 6,
OF GERMANY D-6242 Kronberg-Taunus, Federal Republic of Germany
Copyright © 1984 John Benyon
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any
form or by any means : electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
permission in wnting from the publishers.
First edition 1984
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Scarman and after.
Papers presented at a conference organized May, 1982 by
the Continuing Education Unit, Dept of Adult Education,
University of Leicester, with additional new papers.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Scarman, Leslie George, Sir, 1911- —Congresses.
2. Riots—England—London—Congresses. 3. Public
relations—England—London—Police—Congresses.
4. Youth, Black—Employment—England—London—
Congresses. 5. London (England)—Social policy—
Congresses. 6. Brixton (London, England)—Social
conditions—Congresses. I. Benyon, J. A. (John A.)
II. University of Leicester. Continuing Education Unit.
HV6485.G7S32 1983 303.6'23 0942165 83-13206
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Scarman and after: essays reflecting on Lord Scarman's
Report, the riots and their aftermath.
1. Brixton (London, England)—Riot, 1981 (April)—
Congresses 2. London (England)—Riot, 1981 (April)—
Congresses
I. Benyon, John
942.1'65 DA685.B8/
ISBN 0-08-030217-3 (Hardcover)
ISBN 0-08-030218-1 (Flexicover)
The essays in this book reflect the views of individual
authors and not necessarily those of the organizations with
which they are connected, or those of the editor or
publisher
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
William Clowes Limited, Beccles and London
TO MY MOTHER AND FATHER
LOUIE AND DON BENYON,
WITH LOVE
The use of force alone is temporary. It may subdue for a moment,
but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again.
(EDMUND BURKE, 22 March-1775)
Preface
Although two of the principal funaions of the state are the regulation of
conflict and the maintenance of order in society, public tranquillity is far
from assured. English history reveals many instances of civil tumult of
which the most sanguinary, at least during the last two hundred years, were
the Gordon Riots. The ferocity of this turmoil in June 1780 is vividly
described in Christopher Hibbert's King Mob in which he estimates that the
riots led to the deaths of not less than 850 people. It is no wonder that the
prospect of violent civil discord is greeted with alarm and consternation:
Civil dissension is a viperous worm
That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.
(W. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I)
But not all disorders have been viewed with such dread. E. P. Thompson
points out, in his seminal work The Making of the English Working Class,
that many riots have popularly been regarded as just and their leaders
viewed as heroes, while others have claimed that dissent and revolt should
be welcomed as harbingers of change and reform.
Disobedience in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,
through disobedience and through rebellion.
(O. Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism)
The 1981 Brixton disorders were not a rebellion in the sense of an
organised attempt to overthrow the lawful government, for they were an
unpremeditated outburst of anger and resentment against the police in a
context of social and economic deprivation (Scarman, 8.11-8.12). And
although Lord Scarman stressed that nothing could justify or excuse 'the
terrifying lawlessness of the crowds' (Scarman, 4.97), he found that reforms
and improvements are necessary.
In April 1982, one year after the Brixton riots, a conference was held at the
University of Leicester to consider Lord Scarman's diagnoses and
prescriptions. It was organised by the Continuing Education Unit of the
University's Department of Adult Education, and during three days
twenty-three speakers addressed an audience drawn from the police service,
Vll
vin Preface
community groups, central and local government, churches, education,
pressure groups and the media. Over 260 participants explored the issues
from a wide variety of viewpoints during nearly twenty hours of debate.
Many of the essays in this book are based on contributions made at the
Leicester Conference, and my thanks are due to all who participated and
helped to make the discussions so lively and stimulating. I am especially
grateful to the authors of the chapters which follow who, despite the
considerable demands on their time, willingly revised and updated their
essays.
It is a pleasure to pay tribute to all the members of the Department of
Adult Education who took part in the organisation of the conference. I
would like to thank particularly my fellow Conference Director Colin
Bourn, who is Head of the Continuing Education Unit, the Department's
Secretary John Cunningham who unassumingly and dependably shoul-
dered the administrative responsibilities, and the Conference Secretary
Beryl Penny who smoothly and efficiently dealt with the avalanche of
applications. Without them there would have been no conference and hence
no book.
I would also like to express my appreciation for their help and
encouragement to colleagues at the University of Leicester and in particular
to William Forster, Director and Head of the Department of Adult
Education, Professor J. E. Spence, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, and John Day,
Head of Politics. The research of government publications was greatly
assisted by Mr. A. R. Siddiqui, an Assistant Librarian at the University of
Leicester. I would like to thank my friends in the Department of Politics at
the University of Warwick for their help, Pauline Maniscalco, my secretary,
for her assistance, and Mrs. K. E. Richardson of Pergamon Press. I am
especially grateful to Mrs. Cindy George of Pergamon for her advice and
helpful comments on the production of this book. I also gratefully
acknowledge the financial support of the Commission for Racial Equality,
an organisation which deserves more credit and appreciation than it often
seems to receive. I would particularly like to thank Lionel Morrison for his
help.
My biggest debt is to Jane Hodgkin who produced the transcript of the
conference, which was over 430 pages in length, and typed the revised and
edited chapters. She also played a large part in the preparation of the index. I
am very grateful to her for doing this work so quickly and for managing
accurately to interpret the weird hieroglyphics which were sometimes set
before her. I benefited greatly from her perceptive comments about the
book.
Finally I would like to thank Coleen, Joseph and Danielle for their good
humour and forbearance during the last few months; without this I would
have sunk without trace, and the book with me.
Leicester JOHN BENYON
Acknowledgements
The editor and publisher wish to thank the following for permission to
reproduce material:
The Times
Daily Mail
Daily Mirror
The Guardian
Daily Telegraph
Daily Express
The Sunday Times
The Observer
The Times Higher Education Supplement
Manchester Evening News
Independent Television News
The Political Quarterly
Lion Publishing PLC for permission to reproduce material from Weep for
the City by Colin Bedford.
Cambridge University Press for permission to reproduce material from
'The Economic Contradictions of Democracy' by S. Brittan, published in
the British Journal of Political Science.
The Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office for permission to use
extracts from The Brixton Disorders 10-12 April 1981 (Cmnd 8427), The
House of Commons Official Report (Hansard) and other publications in
Crown copyright.
The Sun was unable to grant permission for copyright material to be used in
this book.
ix
The Contributors
JOHN BENYON is Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Adult Education at the University of
Leicester and was previously at the University of Warwick. He was an elected member of
Warwick District Council, 1979-1983, and his publications include articles in Public
Administration, New Scientist and Local Government Studies.
PAUL BOATENG has been Member for Walthamstow and Chairman of the Police Committee of
the Greater London Council since 1981. He is a practising solicitor, a governor of the
Police Staff College, Bramshill, and he was Labour Party Parliamentary Candidate for
Hertfordshire West in the 1983 election.
JOHN CLARE was appointed the British Broadcasting Corporation's first Community Affairs
Correspondent in 1977. Before moving to the BBC, he worked for Independent Television
News (ITN), The Times, the Daily Mirror and The Observer.
ALAN GOODSON, OBE, QPM, has been Chief Constable of Leicestershire since 1972 and was
President of the Association of Chief Police Officers 1979-1980. After graduating from
Kings College, London in 1951 he served for fourteen years in the Metropolitan Police.
GEORGE GREAVES is Principal Community Relations Officer of the Council for Community
Relations in Lambeth and is a member of the Community Police Consultative Group for
Lambeth which was established in 1982. He gave oral evidence to phase two of Lord
Scarman's Inquiry.
BASIL GRIFFITHS was Vice-Chairman of the Police Federation until his retirement in 1982. He
was born in Cardiff and completed his thirty years' police service in the South Wales
Constabulary; he has now taken up an appointment as full-time Conservative Agent in the
Newport West constituency.
GRAHAM MURDOCK is Research Associate in the Centre for Mass Communication Research at
the University of Leicester. He has published extensively en the news media and social
violence and he co-authored Demonstrations and Communication and Televising Terrorism.
MICHAEL NALLY is Northern Correspondent of The Observer. He is based in his home city of
Manchester and has spent most of his life in the North of England. He worked as a reporter
and news editor for the BBC and has contributed to a number of publications such as New
Society.
KENNETH OXFORD, CBE, QPM, is Chief Constable of Merseyside and was President of the
Association of Chief Police Officers for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 1982-1983.
He was born in Lambeth and served in the Metropolitan Police for twenty-two years from
1947.
USHA PRASHAR has been Director of the Runnymede Trust since 1977. The Trust aims to
contribute to the elimination of all aspects of racism and discrimination and to the
promotion of racial justice. She previously worked at the Race Relations Board after
graduating from the University of Leeds.
RUSSELL PROFITT is Race Relations Adviser for the London Borough of Brent and has been
Labour councillor in Lewisham since 1975. He came to Britain from Guyana at the age of
thirteen and was a deputy headmaster before taking up his present post.
xiii
XIV The Contributors
THE RT. HON. TIMOTHY RAISON has been Conservative member of Parliament for Aylesbury
since 1970. From 1962 to 1968 he was editor of New Society, having previously been on the
editorial staff of New Scientist. He was Minister of State at the Home Office from 1979 to
1983 when he became Minister for Overseas Development. While at the Home Office his
responsibilities included immigration and nationality, race relations, human rights and
broadcasting.
JOHN REX is Direaor of the Social Science Research Council Research Unit on Ethnic
Relations and visiting Professor at the University of Aston in Birmingham. He was
Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick 1970-1979. His books include (with
R. Moore) Race, Community and Conflict; Race Relations in Sociological Theory; Race,
Colonialism and the City; (with S. Tomlinson) Colonial Immigrants in a British City;
Social Conflict; (ed.) Apartheid and Social Research.
KENNETH ROBERTS is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool. The most
recent results of his research in the fields of work, leisure and unemployment were
published as Research Papers by the Department of Employment: Unregistered Youth
Unemployment and Outreach Careers Work. His books include Leisure, From School to
Work, The Working Class and Youth and Leisure.
THE RT. HON. LORD SCARMAN, OBE, has been a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary since 1977. He
was Chairman of the Law Commission, 1965-1973, and he chaired the Tribunal of
Inquiry into the violence and civil disturbances in Northern Ireland in August 1969. He
conducted the inquiry into the 1974 Red Lion Square disorders (Cmnd 5919) and three
years later he chaired the Court of Inquiry into the Grunwick dispute (Cmnd 6922). His
books include Law Reform: the New Pattern and English Law—the New Dimension.
MARGARET SIMEY is Chairman of the Merseyside Police Authority and serves on both
Merseyside County Council and Liverpool City Council. She authored Charitable Effort
in Liverpool in the Nineteenth Century and, jointly with her late husband Professor T.
Simey, Charles Booth. A Scot by birth, she has lived for many years in the heart of Granby
ward which includes Toxteth.
STAN TAYLOR is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Warwick and was elected to serve as a
Conservative councillor in Coventry in 1983. His books include The National Front in
English Politics, Social Science and Revolutions and The Politics of Unemployment.
DEVON THOMAS works in the South Bank Inner City Centre, London which he helped to
establish to focus on the employment and economic needs of inner city communities. He
has lived in Brixton since his family arrived from Jamaica in the 1950s and he was a
prominent figure in the Brixton Defence Campaign which was set up to give support to
those who were arrested, and their families, during the events of 1981.
KEN YOUNG is Senior Fellow at the Policy Studies Institute and has taught at the Universities
of London, Kent, Bristol and Cambridge. He jointly edited Policy and Politics from 1972
to 1978 and his books include Local Politics and the Rise of Party, Strategy and Conflict in
Metropolitan Housing, Policy and Practice in the Multi-racial City and (co-editor) Ethnic
Pluralism and Public Policy.