BRIXTON to HERNE HILL along RAILTON ROAD.
SQUATS and the 1981 RIOTS
In this chapter
Places:
OLIVE MORRIS and black squats. Gay squats 1981 Brixton riot
See next chapter for more about this subjects!.
The 1981 Brixton riot started here. The George public house was burnt down and a number of other buildings were damaged, and the area became known as the "Front Line". The George was replaced with a Caribbean bar called Mingles in 1981, which lasted in one form or another (later called Harmony) as a late-night mostly Caribbean-British attended club/bar until the 2000s. Despite its reputation as run-down, violent and racially tense – a "no-go" area – it was a hotbed of Afro-Caribbean culture, radical political activity and working-class community.
Alongside ATLANTIC ROAD
Former RAILWAY HOTEL
Former ATLANTIC HOTEL
The FRONTLINE
The cross-roads of ATLANTIC and CROSSHARBOUR, this is the beginning of the so notoriously called FRONTLINE, the “womb of recent history”, “a boundary across which the local police and the communion revolt eyeballed each other”, at the end of the 70s, and into the early 80s. “Skirmish after skirmish disturbed the peace until”… the explosion of the most serious 20th c. riot in the UK
Well this was the epicentre of the 1981 RIOTS, and for a long time has had a drug-dealing reputation (remember THE ATLANTIC).
It is true that the district was run-down, violent, racially tense, a no-go area… Travel-books still mentioned that drug dealing at the end of the 90s (travel-books… that means that the area had something touristy!.
Despite its reputation as run-down, violent and racially tense – a "no-go" area – it was a hotbed of Afro-Caribbean culture, radical political activity and working-class community in London, and of radical and working class political activity.
And, as a matter of fact, the area (Brixton, as a whole) has been subject to an ongoing process of GENTRIFICATION, that has erased much of its radical recent past.
At the South end of ATLANTIC ROAD starts RAILTON ROAD
“RAILTON”?
English (northern): possibly a variant of Relton a habitational name perhaps from Wrelton (North Yorkshire). The origin of the placename is uncertain but it may derive from Old English wearg 'felon' + hyll 'hill' + tūn 'farmstead estate'.
To the left:Former MAYALL ROAD, now MARCUS GARVEY WAY
RAILTON ROAD was the hub of life, the frontline, the home of the street culture proper of the WEST INDIAN COMMUNITY.
Life turned around Squatting and SHEBEENS or BLUES CLUBS. Those were self organised drinking clubs, around reggae, toasting and cannabis.
After the riot, the area was completely cleared and replaced by social housing. Mayall Road was truncated, thus removing its northern junction with Atlantic Road (the rather soulless stub of road remaining is now known as Marcus Garvey Way).
Links between MARCUS GARVEY and BRIXTON…
HARLEM is the link. Read more about MARCUS GARVEY in the next chapter.
Talma Rd.
OLIVIA MORRIS
ST.VINCENT
Keystones
Rattray Parklet
DEXTERS PLAYGROUND, by BIG KID FOUNDATION an award-winning charity on a mission to end youth violence
Info in pics ++
BOB MARLEY WAY
A stretch of MAYALL RD. renamed amd redeveloped in the 80s. Curiously enough BOB MARLEY did not have a direct link with BRIXTON!
No.78 RAILTON ROAD.Former South London Gay Liberation squat Communal centre
Opened here March 1974
A communal garden, in between squats on both RAILTON and MAYALL Roads.
People escaping oppression were looking for shared safe places, determined to life publicly and to show pride. Radical housing, radical families
Modern dancing, regular disco,sewing, theatre (BRIXTON FAIRIES, a gay theatre group)
Here the exploration of gender roled were encouraged, against a background of a rigid system of differences. Regular counselling services and collective meetings to determine the campaigns they had to support and get involved in.
Evicted in 1976, they moved to no.155.
Late 80s. This squats were ultimately dismantled or incorporated into housing communities.
The communal gardens here have remained, but the buildings have been divided into single occupancy units, being incorporated into a BRIXTON HOUSING CO-OP, which continue to reserve homes for LGBTQ tenants
As well, in NOTTING HILL
In COLVILLE TERRACE, a commune by the GAY LIBERATION FRONT.
In FARADAY ROAD, LESBIAN/FEMINIST commune.
ST.GEORGE’S RESIDENCES
Efra Parade
Site of the GEORGE PH
The GEORGE was completely burned down (as was the the CASTLE, in MAYALL ROAD, and other buildings).The Caribbean bar MINGLES replaced the pub, and later it was renamed HARMONY, and it lasted as a late night Caribbean club/bar until the 2000s.
WINIFRED ATWELL
Born in Trinidad (1910?,1914?). She began playing the piano from an early age, but initially trained to be a pharmacist.
She went to study in the USA and moved to London in 1946 where she trained at the Royal Academy of Music, becoming the first woman pianist to be awarded the academy's highest grade. She played in clubs in order to support her studies, and was spotted by Bernard Delfont, who gave her a long-term contract. Her recordings became popular and her 'Black and White Rag' propelled her to national fame.
The first Black person to have a numberu 1 in the UK singing chart. A she remains the only female instrumentalist to have done so. In Dec.1954 she was TOP of the UK’s CHRSITMAS POPS with LETS HAVE ANOTHER PARTY.
He sold 20 mil.+ records with her ragtime and bougie piano hits.
In 1956 she opened here the first UK black hair and beauty saloon. Starting in 1956 she had her own television series in which she occasionally played classical music, but usually played 'honky-tonk' on what she called her 'other piano'. She toured Australia many times and eventually settled there.
No.103. Former PEARL ALCOCK’S SHEEBEEN
No.105. Former ALCOCK’S CAFÉ
P.A. ran a dress shop, and later a shebeen, and it followed a café, as the 1981Riot, deterred her clientele.. After finding herself on the dole, following the 1985 Uprising, she took to drawing.
Chaucer Road
No.121 RAILTON ROAD
Former OLIVE MORRIS squat
This building in part taken over by OLIVE MORRIS and LIZ OBI.
LIZ MORRIS had arrived from the WEST INDIES in her teenage years. IN BRIXTON, where she was schooled experienced the xenophobia and inequality that characterised the migrant Black community.
From this experience, emerged a fierce, uncompromising fighter against the authoritarian powers that be. Rebellious and disruptive at school. Fearless and challenging of injustice, she was a member of the BLACK PANTHERS.
1969. At 17 she was arrested for going in aid of a black man being amassed by police. She gained a reputation for her willing to get stuck and help peop (in housing, in social security, in courts, in police stations).
Confrontational, with no fear, no hesitation.
OM helped develop the BLACK SQUATTING in Brixton
There was a different WHITE SQUATTING CULTURE. Different, but they somehow mingled together.
They were many empty buildings. The LCC program of COMPULSIVE PURCHASE and REDEVELOPMENT was never properly implemented.
Olive Morris and Liz Obi learned from a white woman that had opened a WOMEN’S CENTRE in RAILTON ROAD. They decided to look for a place: they found no.121, shop and flat, derelict.
They followed the techniques learned from other squats. After being evicted (up to 3 times here) they would be back in.
OM/LO helped developing the movement, setting up a study group. All was part of the local community political struggle.
They also set up here, at 121, the SABAAR, BLACK BOOK SHOP.
https://rememberolivemorris.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/sabaar-bookshop/
The Black Movement was at that time very active in Britain and in the US. They needed to learn and to write their own history. Resistance literature, against imperialism, in times of decolonisation, was very important,
SQUATTERS HANDBOOK written and published here
OLIVE MORRIS died in 1979, at 26 years of age, but this place was not finished and became
1981~1999. A squatted autonomous centre
Serving the community as a bookshop, café, gig and rehearsing space, office, printing facility, meeting space.
Punk gigs were hosted here, women’s café nights, queer nights… vegan banquets, film nights, cabarets, zine-making, disco parties…
Hosted by ANARQUIST.
After a long occupation, the squat lost the court case against Lambeth’sclaim for possession of the premises and an eviction order was issued . It the squatters were not going to give up easily, embarking on a public campa to,draw attention to their plight… they “invaded” the Town Hall, performed plays in the streets, organised a drink-in (again the new anti-street drinking by-law). Flyposting and billboarding campaigns to keep up,the pressure… A self-publish magazine, SOUTHBLO DON STRESS, keeping people up to date with new developments, and adding comments about the continued gentrification the area.
The residents were people from many countries. The wanted to stress the problem of homelessness, they were determined to move to another squat…
Eviction got closer, they barricades themselves inside the building, decorated with banners and paintings.
10 April 1999. All-day street party to celebrate the 86 days of resistance.A few hundreds attended.
Road blocks, sound systems, the street resonating to the strains of an eclectic DJ mix, from hip-hop to roots, reggae to THE CLASH.
Finally, 12 August. 6.30am. Bailiffs assisted but an specialist armed police entered the premises and removed the 7 remaining residents.
BRIXTON was an ocean of cultures. And the spaces of activism turned around feminism, gay/lesbian, anarchism, the left…
Police and authorities hated all that…and their actions were as if they were an occupation army: raids, repression, endemic racism… Many Police officers were members of the NATIONAL FRONT.
The RIOTS (81, 85, 95) emerged from this ambient.
BLACK POWER GROUPS (BLACK PANTHER PARTY) developed from this sense of “us and them”.
2020s. This has never entirely gone away. Some dynamics are cropping up: new stop and search powers have been drawn up, carbon copies of the SUS laws that led to the 1981 uprising have been published… Certainly, all interspersed with some periods of softy softy approach…. But there is still a basic hostility, racism, against the BLACK COMMUNITY.
Former studio/flat of ROTIMI FANI-KAYODE
Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s studio on Railton Road in Brixton was a frontline space in the 1980s: highly policed, it was the centre of riots and conflict — home to members of the Brixton Black Panthers; the Race Today collective; Marxist writer CLR James, as well as the South London Gay Community Centre and the Brixton Fairies. As the far-right gained ground under Thatcher, using the AIDs pandemic to justify their homophobia and racist sus laws to stop and search who they pleased; Fani-Kayode’s bright flat in the Brixton Housing co-op became a much-needed safe space for queer and Black individuals to express their desires and selves freely.
No.155. BRIXTON GAY NEWS COMMUNITY were established here
After being evicted from No.78. They shared a squat of 8 terraced houses. Around 60 men.
NATIONAL GAY MEN NEWS DEFENSE COMMITTEE.
1976 GAY PRIDE organisers.
Shakespeare Rd.
No.38 Shakespeare Road. BRITISH BLACK PANTHERS Party HQ
Nos.165~167. BRIXTON ADVICE CENTRE
A place in the heart of the community, due to its vital role. Brixton Advice Centre was founded in 1966 as a family advice centre by a group of volunteers who worked in the then Children’s Department of Lambeth Borough Council. The Centre moved to its present Railton Road shop-front premises in 1974 and added regular general advice sessions to the existing, predominantly legal, evening sessions. Lambeth Borough Council increased its funding to reflect the Centre’s growing reputation for good advice and legal work
Installation
Artist/designer JOHN DANIELS, launched coinciding with the 2015 BLACK HISTORY MONTH.
A tribute to the building’s significance and to the heroes of Brixton’s and South London’s cultural heritage,
C.L.R.JAMES - WINIFRED ATWELL - DARCUS HOWE - FARRUCKH DONDY - LINTON KNESI JOHNSON - OLIVE MORRIS
Memorial plaques to
CIRIL LIONEL ROBERT JAMES (1901-1989)
After coming to England, in 1932, invited by SIR LEARIE CONSTANTINE, fellow Trinidadian and cricketer, he made his name reporting on cricket matches for the MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.
In 1938 he published THE BLACK JACOBINS, history of Haitian independence.
He moved to the US, becoming involved in TROTSKIST politics. He actually met TROTSKY in Mexico. But as years went by his thinking roamed more widely across history, literature and politics.
Back in London, in 53, he lived in HAMSTEAD and WILLESDEN.
Back in TRINIDAD he became involved in the independence movement, editing the newspaper THE NATION.
In the 1980s he has acquired an iconic status amongst the W.I. community here. Someone called him “the Plato of his generation”.
He spent his last years housebound, in a cramped flat, above the offices of the journal RACE TODAY, but a place of pilgrimage for students, journalists and politicians.
LEIGHTON RHETT RADFORD“DARCUS” HOWE
Born in Trinidad and arrived in England as a teenager in 1961. His intention was to study law, but in London, he got involved with immediate issues affecting young Black people and joined the British Black Panthers. He came to public attention in 1970 as one of the nine protestors, known as the Mangrove Nine, arrested and tried on charges that included conspiracy to incite a riot, which had followed a protest against repeated police raids of The Mangrove restaurant in Notting Hill, London. Keep reading…
RACE TODAY
Race Today was a radical anti-racist magazine and publishing house that was a central part of the British racial justice movement from 1973–1988.The magazine was a voice for Black and Asian activists and intellectuals, and was a leader in the fight for social justice
LEILA HASSAN HOWE
Activist. Founder of RACE TODAT COLLECTIVE and editor of RACE TODAY journal (1973-1988).
LINTON KWESI JOHNSON
No. 207 Mayal Road
Former WOMEN’S CENTRE
In the mid 70s, a help point for squatting
“198º. CONTEMPORARY ARTS AND LEARNING
affectionately known as '198' by locals, is more than just a gallery – it's a vibrant reflection of the multicultural tapestry that is Lambeth.
Brixton, a melting pot where diverse communities converge, has been shaped by the contributions of the African Caribbean community since the 1950s. With a rich cultural tapestry and an anti-establishment spirit, the borough has become a creative epicentre where myriad languages and dialects resonate, making it a microcosm of London's dynamic life.
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