No Win Race. Derek A. Bardowell

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СКАЧАТЬ division and Minter faded into retirement, racism had become an everyday struggle. Shopkeepers frequently told me to leave their shops for no reason or they would call the police, bus drivers refused to let me on their buses, old ladies clutched their bags in my presence and police stopped and searched me for no reason (ignoring my best friend, who happened to be white). I had an older white youth threaten to slash my throat with a bulb if I didn’t shout a racist obscenity, and another older kid, a neighbour who I had invited round to my house to play, pin me down in my own living room and call me a black bastard.

      It wasn’t just the frequency of these incidents that troubled me. The settings, the timings, added to my distress. These incidents happened in the daytime, in sweet shops, at bus stops, on the way to school, on the high street, outside the school gates, in my home.

      I tried to minimise my presence when out in public. Walked soft. As I was attempting to do so, Newham’s black and Asian youths had started to fight back. This time I knew their names and I could see their faces.

      Fight.

      A group of elder Asian youths had taken to protecting younger children from racist attacks by accompanying them home from Little Ilford school. On 24 September 1982, three ‘scruffily dressed’ white men in bomber jackets and jeans jumped out of their car and started abusing this group of young and elder Asian youths, which led to a fight. Uniformed police were on the scene swiftly, resulting in eight Asian youths being badly beaten and taken to Forest Gate police station. It turned out that the ‘scruffily dressed’⁷ white men were plain-clothes policemen. The community mobilised swiftly around what became known as the Newham 8. This led to demonstrations largely frequented by Asian children and young people. The resulting national media coverage exposed Newham policing for what it had been at the time: meek in the face of racism and aggressive in its policing against black and Asian communities. The police had been placing the blame on the victims.

      By the summer of 1984, racist violence had not subsided. I had been transitioning from primary to secondary school. At this point, Little Ilford had a mobile police unit situated within its school grounds. It had also erected spiked metal frames on the periphery of the school. My parents decided that it would be safer sending me to Langdon Secondary School in East Ham, some 30 minutes away from our house, instead of Little Ilford.

      Disgust.

      On 7 August 1984, a group of white youths randomly started carrying out acts of violence against black and Asian people. In one incident, a disabled Asian youth was hit on the head with a hammer. A group of Asian youths decided to confront the alleged white culprits outside the Duke of Edinburgh pub. A fight ensued but whereas five of the Asian youths spent seven weeks on remand for offences that did not warrant such length, their white counterparts were immediately let out on bail.

      On 29 November 1984, 16-year-old black youth Eustace Pryce was stabbed in the head outside the Greengate pub in Plaistow. Pryce, his brother Gerald and some friends had confronted racists, which led to a fight in which Eustace was fatally stabbed. The police, on arrival, arrested Gerald and not Eustace’s killer despite plain-clothes officers allegedly witnessing the tail end of the fight. Eustace’s killer Martin Newhouse was eventually arrested. Yet while Newhouse had been let out on bail because ‘it would be wrong to keep him in jail over Christmas’, Gerald had been denied bail. He spent Christmas in prison and on release Gerald was prevented from going back into Newham, despite his girlfriend being pregnant at the time.

      Fight.

      The black and Asian communities rallied behind both cases under the guises of the Newham 7 Defence Campaign and the Justice for the Pryce Family Support Committee. This led to the National Demonstration Against Racism on 27 April 1985 with 3,000 demonstrators. A further 2,000 demonstrators marched on 11 May. The pressure from both campaigns led to national coverage about poor policing in Newham. This exerted pressure, symbolised by the demonstrations uniting blacks and Asians while also highlighting institutionally racist policing, contributed to justice being done. Newhouse was sentenced to four and a half years’ youth custody for manslaughter and two years for affray, running concurrently. Gerald had not been criminalised. While some of the Newham 7 did time, the case highlighted that reasonable physical resistance against attacks would not automatically result in prison. The coverage of the Newham 7 and Eustace Pryce campaigns also demonstrated that cases like these could no longer be swept under the carpet and that blacks and Asians had the right to defend themselves.⁸

      Black was not just a term that unified the African diaspora, it also became a term that united all black and brown people in the fight against racism. This had been my London. The London I grew up in. A London that had been hostile towards me from the beginning, a London where black and brown resistance had been unified and emphatic.

      Minter–Hagler symbolised more than the racial divides of the time. It symbolised the choice you had to make growing up back then. Blackness or Britishness? Colour or country? Do you side with those with shared experiences or those with a shared birthplace? I had to choose. Rebel or comply. Be bold or be shy. Risk exclusion or be subservient.

      I knew it would be impossible for me to remain anonymous being black. No middle ground. There were no hiding places for black athletes. No hiding place for blacks. And no hiding place for me.

^* The Virk brothers were racially abused and attacked by five white youths in East Ham. The brothers fought back and one of the white youths was stabbed. The Virks called the police and they were arrested. When they went to trial, the police’s chief prosecution witnesses were the white youths. The Virks were found guilty and served time. The Ramsey family had been subjected to frequent harassment from the police including a raid on their home when 11 family members were arrested. Akhtar Ali Baig was killed in East Ham by two young men and two young women aged 15 to 17 years who spat in his face, racially abused him before stabbing him in the heart. One of the assailants allegedly said, ‘I’ve just gutted a P*ki.’ Ten-year-old Kennith Singh never returned home after going to the shops in Plaistow. His dead body was found under some old carpets several days after he went missing. The Touissant brothers were racially abused and attacked by the police and eventually taken to a police station for no apparent reason.

CHAPTER 2

       BLACKWASHED

      IN MY HOUSE, THE ATHLETES my father and mother admired did not try to hide. The foremost sporting names had been the boxer Muhammad Ali and the West Indies cricket team. I kind of missed the Ali era, only catching the tragic tail end of the most magnificent career in sport’s history. I grew up at a time when Larry Holmes ruled boxing’s heavyweight division, from 1978 to 1985. In truth, there was little to choose between Ali and Holmes. Both were wonderful boxers, great thinkers, with piercing jabs and an ability to control the narrative in the ring, to improvise, to ensure they had the final say in the storyline. Both were technically gifted and incredibly tough with a frightening ability to absorb huge punishment without being knocked out. Both looked good too, like lighter-weight fighters. Most heavyweights are lumbering, crude, one-dimensional, mechanical. Imposing. But difficult to watch. Ali and Holmes had speed, mobility, fluidity.

      Holmes couldn’t scale to Ali’s heights though. Couldn’t come close. He didn’t have the charisma. He didn’t fight with the same balletic grace. Didn’t have Ali’s back story, the way he stood up for black people, his eloquence, his beauty, his ability to be vocal in situations when he had been expected to be compliant. Holmes, it seemed to many, stood more for money than politics. And rarely would his fights have as much drama as Ali’s. Holmes’ fights were well scripted, technically sound, not expansive, unrepeatable, intimidating in their excellence. Ali СКАЧАТЬ