690T 'Worst race riots since Watts' ran the headlines in many US papers following the explosion that shook Miami last month. The burning and looting that took place in the next few days was described in nervous detail.
The ostensible cause of the riot was the release - by an all-white jury - of four policemen accused of killing a young Black. But, as many Blacks later pointed out, this was just the spark in a powder keg of anger and frustration built up over many years of racial injustice.
FRUSTRATION Miami are nui mited, hunerer. to the SA. Only a month or so earlier, a similar upheaval took place not 3,000 miles away but in St Pauls, Bristol, where thousands of young Blacks exploded into action after a violent police raid on a local cafe.
After three hours of street fighting, the police were forced to withdraw. Once gone, the Black youth (supported by many young whites) gave vent to their anger by looting shops and setting fire to Lloyd's bank.
As a young Black social worker. who had lived in St. Pauls for many years, explained: "It has gone so far that these kids could not take it any more, and were just letting off their frustration". BIAS What frustration? Frustration against a society which - as recession grows - has nothing to offer them but ghetto housing, dole queues and dead-end jobs at miserable wages.
Thatcher's policies may hit all working people - but they hit Blacks twice as hard. The growing jobless queues for youth are a scandal - but in places like St. Pauls or Brixton, they are twice the national average.
Cuts in housing are criminal but they fall doubly hard on Black urban ghettos like Southall or Lewisham. Cuts in education affect the prospects of all children, but they fall twice as hard on Blacks consigned to already inner-city scnouls.
DISCRIMINATION Moreover, this discrimination against Blacks is reintorced by' the racist climate being whipped up by the Tories. Thatcher was elected to power on a clear racist ticket which included giving the police greater powers - under the 1971 Immigration Act - to harass and intimidate the Black community.
These powers - combined with the infamous SUS laws - have led to a systematic persecution of Black people. As the same social worker went on: "A lot of young kids in the neighbourhood are being continually molested by the police when they go out walking.. They are taken to the police station, told to say things they know nothing about and then charged" Police harassment of this kind has built up an explosive atmosphere which - as in Miami or St Pauls - can be detonated at any moment.
NERVOUS Of course, the Fleet Street press has tried to portray the incidents at Bristol as a 'black versus white' conflict. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
The Black youth who took to the streets in Bristol were not directing their anger against the white members of the community (many of whom joined them in the battle with the police). When single incidenie vi anti-ünite VIDICHCC.
They were directing it against a system which condemns them -because of the colour of their skin - to ghetto housing, dead-end jobs and the dole queues. They were directing it against the representatives of this system - the police - who are there to enforce its racist bias.
ENQUIRY ment so nervous. They are only too aware of the anti-capitalist implications of this struggle - and of the fact that it could spread to other areas in the months ahead where identical problems exist.
This is why they have set up a public enquiry to look into the causes of the upsurge. They no doubt hope that leading Race Relations experts - such as Alec Lyons - will be able to defuse