Britain Under Fire

The racial disturbances that first rocked Britain’s inner cities in 1981 and flared again this year were grim reminders of the nation’s increasingly deep social problems. Yet there seemed to be limits to the violence. No police had been killed, and although rioters had thrown rocks and gasoline bombs, they had never used guns. All that changed in a few fierce hours last week when angry rioters, mostly blacks, rampaged through the north London neighborhood of Tottenham. A dozen youths hacked a policeman to death with machetes, and others fired shotguns, rifles and pistols at the police.

The events brought a quick response from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party. At the Tories’ annual conference in Blackpool, which opened two days after the Tottenham disturbance, Home Secretary Douglas Hurd proposed a law making the commission of a crime while carrying a firearm punishable by life imprisonment. The rioters and looters, Hurd declared, were motivated by “greed and the excitement of violence.” In her speech to the delegates, Thatcher concurred, saying, “This is crime masquerading as social protest.”

Earlier, London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Kenneth Newman had warned that in the future, police antiriot squads would be permitted to disperse crowds by firing plastic bullets and using tear gas. Both weapons are employed by British troops stationed in Northern Ireland but have never been used elsewhere in Britain. Said a determined Newman: “Officers deployed in such grave situations look to me for reasonable protection. They must and will have it. Anarchy cannot be allowed to prevail.”

The violence in Tottenham was the worst in memory. In addition to the policeman’s grisly death, 223 other officers and 20 civilians were injured, some 50 cars were set ablaze, one store was fire-bombed, and another was looted. The violence was ignited after police, searching for stolen goods, raided a black woman’s house. While the police were still there the woman collapsed, and later died on the way to the hospital. Her family contended that she suffered a heart attack after officers pushed her to the floor. A day after word of her death spread through the neighborhood, hundreds of youths gathered in the streets and attacked riot squads that had been sent to the area. The police, who were carrying only plastic shields, were showered with flaming gasoline bombs. Four teenage boys, three black and one white, were arrested later in the week in connection with the policeman’s death. The oldest was 15, the youngest 13.

The outrage that the police raid provoked among residents had a familiar ring. During the search of a black household in London’s Brixton area last month, an officer shot a woman, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. That shooting touched off a night of riots.

Such accidental shootings have raised questions about how well Britain’s traditionally unarmed police are being trained in the use of firearms. One policeman in 10 is now authorized to carry a gun; in London, the ratio is 1 in 5. The shootings have hardened resentment among blacks who accuse the mostly white police force of insensitivity and racism. That lingering bitterness was evident the day after the Tottenham riot. Bernie Grant, a black Marxist who heads the local borough council, not only refused to condemn the killing of the officer but declared that the police had received “a bloody good hiding.” The remark outraged much of the country. But it was especially embarrassing for Neil Kinnock, leader of the opposition Labor Party; Grant is expected to run for Parliament as a Labor candidate.