Read Online Pitch Black by Emy Onuora - Free Book Online

imposed on the NF in favour of the local black community and anti-racists, claiming that aban would lead to ‘increasing pressure’ to ban similar events and he would be ‘abdicating his responsibility in the face of groups who threaten to achieve their ends by violent means’.
    The NF’s confidence was checked, if not shattered, in the wake of the so-called ‘Battle of Lewisham’. The NF planned to march from New Cross to Lewisham, but never reached their final destination. Two hundred and seventy policemen were injured and fifty-six hospitalised, while over 200 marchers were injured, with seventy-eight hospitalised. Riot shields were used for the first time in the UK outside Northern Ireland as the police and racists on one side and local black youths and anti-fascists on the other side were involved in violent clashes.
    Fearing similar violent clashes, Greater Manchester Police banned an NF march through Hyde in October 1977, but were defied by NF guru Martin Webster, who marched alone carrying a Union Jack and a sign reading ‘Defend British Free Speech from Red Terrorism’. In spite of the ban, Webster was protected by some 2,000 police as he marched, since ‘one man’ did not constitute a breaking of the ban.
    The NF was the predominant Nazi organisation of the 1970s. They adopted an opportunist approach to politics by campaigning aggressively against non-white immigration, particularly highlighting supposed competition for jobs and housing, and preyed on the fears of British-born whites by emphasising black youths’ alleged propensity for crime. An unashamedly racist membership organisation, it actively tried to recruit amongst white football supporters and engaged in highly provocative actions such as marching through black and Asian neighbourhoods and communities, therefore deliberately provoking a violent confrontation with black and Asian youths and white anti-racists. Invariably thisprovocative behaviour was supported by local police forces, who took the side of the far right, as illustrated in Lewisham.
    As a matter of operational policy, the police systematically misappropriated Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824 in order to harass, intimidate and criminalise black communities, particularly young black men. The ‘Sus’ law, as it was referred to in common parlance, enabled police to stop and search certain individuals they suspected of frequenting or loitering in a public place with intent to commit an arrestable offence.
    This hated law had provoked drives for greater police accountability in the use of stop and search, as black communities increasingly took exception to the manner and frequency with which young men were being harassed. The law illustrated the overwhelmingly tense and suspicious relationship that was the dominant feature of relations between the police and black communities, which occasionally spilled over into violent clashes. In 1975, a Bonfire Night celebration in Chapeltown, Leeds, where Ces Podd grew up and where he would later undertake some outstanding community work, ended in a violent confrontation between black youths and police in which police cars were stoned, severely injuring two officers, and pitched battles were fought with police who arrived to rescue their colleagues. The much larger and higher-profile disturbances at the Notting Hill Carnival over the August bank holiday weekend in 1976 provided a further example of this fraught relationship.
    In mainstream politics, Margaret Thatcher, then leader of the Conservative opposition, had told ITV’s World in Action , when speaking on the subject of immigration in January 1978, that ‘people are really rather afraid that this country might be swamped by people with a different culture’.
    Her comments didn’t represent a shift in policy. The Conservative Party had taken a hard line on immigration since she had been elected as party leader in 1975, and she had reintroduced a racist discourse to mainstream politics