Original subtitles

This programme contains some strong language,

discriminatory language and content some may find offensive

and scenes which some viewers may find disturbing.

Children have been burnt -

not West Indians, black British.

That is what I want said!

They are burning our children!

Why haven't Parliament said anything?!

ARCHIVE: This is all that remains of the three-storey house,

where nearly 100 young West Indians were

celebrating at an all-night birthday party for two young friends.

That night, we were there at the party, and for people outside

looking in, I mean, maybe they can just imagine.

Just before six o'clock this morning, the singing and dancing

gave way to panic, as flames shot through the upper floors,

and screaming teenagers began to leap from the windows.

But, for what we really, really went through, that time,

to be even sitting here, talking about it, you know is...is...

..is hard.

It was just horrific, a girl and a boy -

they just sort of fell, right down to a basement.

The fire, we literally had seconds to get out.

I just couldn't really believe it had all happened,

and it just became a living nightmare.

I just remember kids

lying on stretchers, burnt till they were pink,

and the smell of burning flesh, that will go to my grave.

ARCHIVE: The party began at 11 last night,

then at six o'clock there was a loud bang.

There was just smoke everywhere and then, afterwards,

people were telling me

that some white man had thrown a petrol bomb through the window.

I saw this bloke standing up in the pavement,

then he made this throwing movement with his right hand.

At that point, in 1981, colour mattered.

We are very dissatisfied with the way the government has behaved,

Parliament has behaved.

The problem became that the New Cross fire became

an us-and-them affair.

It became a black-and-white affair. But this whole thing

was about youngsters being murdered.

The fire, at 439 New Cross Road, whether it was deliberately inside,

deliberately outside, I have always believed it was a deliberate act.

As a kid, you grow and you have fantasies,

and one of mine was being able to fly.

That's my way out.

And that's what it was. I think I still have that kiddie dream

of flying off into the sunset and everything being all right one day.

My name is Wayne Haynes. I was born in London,

a place called Lee Green, which is very leafy,

very '60s suburbia.

Don't ask me how I ended up being a teenager living in New Cross

in what we called Ghetto.

HE CHUCKLES

That was not part of the plan

when my mum gave birth!

But my mother and father split up, my mum had a nervous breakdown,

I ended up in care for two years, being fostered,

with a white family who treated me like I was one of their own.

It's life, and you get on with it and you learn,

and it teaches you that people are people.

My name is Denise Gooding. I grew up in Camberwell, in South East London,

with my mum and my dad and my three brothers.

We lived in a flat, it was a four-bedroom flat. It was good,

it was nice living in a flat, cos it's like a community,

so you all knock on each other's doors.

In those days, everybody came to our house.

My parents, I think they felt safer knowing

that as long as we were there, they would know where we were.

It was an open house, you know, cos if someone's kid come and I send

them away and something happened out there, I would blame myself.

So, you know, I always let them in.

Plus, my dad played dominoes.

So him and all his friends and family and that would come in

on a Friday night and they would play dominoes.

So while they were playing the dominoes, we'd be playing music,

because Richard and David and Andrew were all into music.

My name's Richard, Richard Gooding. To be truthful, our house was pretty

open with my mum and dad's friends, so there was always, like, music.

We would just sit in the house,

I'd play my vinyls - what we called toasting back then.

# Bring back the memories... #

And David would be playing the bass guitar,

and my friends would be singing, and Andrew would be banging,

banging away at this thing, making drums - I don't know,

for some reason, he seemed to like drums. I don't know.

I was the oldest of the four of us.

David, he's a year younger than me.

My brother, Andrew, he was four years younger than me.

My sister, Denise, well, she's always been the baby.

And we were really close, just a typical family. We didn't have much

but, you know, we were really happy.

My name is Sandra Ruddock.

My mum and dad were the sweetest people ever.

Erm, my dad was a famous wrestler.

In the Blue corner, ladies and gentlemen,

King of the head butts, from West Africa, Johnny Kwango!

He was king of the head butts - he had a REALLY hard head.

It was showmanship, they were there to entertain the public.

LAUGHTER

We lived in Dulwich until I was about eight,

and then we moved to Peckham.

And we had to be careful with the friends that we chose.

Me and my brother were not allowed

to get in trouble with the police or do anything untoward.

My mum always used to say to us, "Remember,

"it's your dad's reputation when you go out on the street."

We used to go to work with him. I quite enjoyed that,

I loved going to work with my dad. I loved it, it was nice.

I liked sitting in the front row, the old biddies going up

and shouting, "Leave him alone! Leave him alone!"

I'm going, "Yeah, that's my dad! Leave him alone!"

COMMENTATOR CHUCKLES

And it's over the top for Kwango. Holding the arms well.

That's got to be it.

My mum was just a housewife, really.

They were happily married for 40-odd years, and I remember at school,

a couple of guys said, "If there was a war between blacks and whites,

"what side of the fence would you be on?" I was quite upset.

# Children of the Ghetto

# Running wild and free

# In the concrete jungle... #

In my time, at school...

The Telegraph and the Daily Express.

..black boys were not encouraged to do anything.

I was already being told, "You're not going to be a pilot."

By then, you know, you'd hear a lot of kids at school saying, you know,

"Go back home, get back on your banana boat

"and go back where you come from," and things like that.

So, then, you know, I then...

As I got of age, I started to hear about National Front, and knew

what they were all about.

We believe that the only solution to the rising tide of race trouble

in this country is for a complete stop

to all further coloured immigration and

for total repatriation of

the coloured immigrants and their descendants.

ARCHIVE: The National Front is wooing the white vote,

with calls for repatriation and more police.

So, no chanting, no singing, no banner-waving, you're just

pedestrians out for a stroll to give out leaflets, all right?

My name is George Rhoden. I grew up in a time when racism was prominent.

I know that they were National Front, I've seen them

walking in town and they've got their leaflets,

they're handing out their leaflets, the same white middle-aged men...

We believe in stopping immigration right away.

..sending out their messages, driving along in the street...

The National Front says, stop immigration.

..then screaming out obscenities to you.

I'd seen them outside the school.

And so, anyway, one day, we were having a laugh after school

and things like that,

and I could see a little bit of a flicker of a flame,

and I saw a small group of people

burning a cross.

We all looked at each other and think, "What are they doing?!"

I was probably, what, I don't know, 14, 15?

"What are they doing?" And then you saw

the guy with the hood,

he was probably the only one with a hood on.

That was the Ku Klux Klan. I never proved it,

but why would he be burning a cross, and the guy's got a hood on?

Could it just be a little bit of a joke? Don't know.

But scared the shit out of me.

Stop coloured immigration.

My name's Mykaell Riley. I grew up in Handsworth, in Birmingham,

as a first-generation black British-born individual.

Back in the '70s, my household, as with many households,

had the Queen adorning the top of the fireplace or something.

And we would complain about society

outside the house, and our parents would always default

to assuming we'd done something wrong,

and we were ignorant of our own history, right?

So we're trying to find ourselves.

And then Bob Marley arrives with a narrative which has given us

an alternative sense of identity.

# No sun will shine in my day today

# No sun will shine

# The high yellow moon won't come out to play... #

So were listening to each record, to get a sense of who we are.

# Darkness has covered my light... #

And songs like Concrete Jungle

directly spoke to the challenge of growing up, to being black British.

# Where is the love to be found...? #

And this is the Britain that I'm growing up in, with aspirations to

conquer the world through music.

In the background of most, if not all reggae, it stems from suffering.

# Instead of concrete jungle... #

Cos reggae is suffering, basically.

And it's truth as well. Yeah.

# Concrete jungle Jungle

# Man, you got to do your best... #

My name is Alex Wheatle. I grew up without any family whatsoever.

My mother could not look after me, so I was placed into care,

and so I was totally detached from my culture,

until I went to Brixton.

I mean, I was growing to love reggae music,

from even before I moved to Brixton, and to hear it everywhere,

it seemed to be every street corner. I remember Soferno B,

I remember Desmond's Hip City.

I remember Bob Marley's track, Concrete Jungle.

I had very much low esteem, I had to fight against that, almost on a

daily basis, to reclaim my identity,

and reggae music helped in that process.

My name's Andy, and I was a friend of Paul Ruddock's.

I first became aware of Paul due to the music -

he was playing his radio quite loud.

Capital record break!

# Woman, take me in your arms Rock your baby... #

He played Rock Your Baby by George McCrae.

I didn't know he was black for the first month,

couldn't actually see him, he couldn't see me.

Cos we were both in traction, I had to look up to the ceiling,

because it's the most comfortable place to rest my head.

I had a severe motorcycle accident,

and I found out that he had a motorcycle accident. Anyway, the

rooms were adjacent, he used to play music, Capital Radio, at the time.

I used to play music, Radio 1.

It was a really hot summer, 1976.

So we had the windows open, the doors open,

and we used to, like, shout in to each other,

"Did you like that song?"

It was a bit of a competition, really.

We had two different stations blaring out the music.

The nurses used to come into the room and say, "Right, stop! Stop!"

MUSIC STOPS

And then they would walk off, and we'd turn the radios up again.

I played him Play That Funky Music, White Boy

by Wild Cherry.

I'm not sure that Paul actually liked it. He went, "Mm..."

He was quite interesting to talk to.

He was confident, but he used words that I'd never heard before.

He used the word "cool", and "Oh, that's cool".

And I went, "Oh, what does that mean?" You know?

When I came back to London, and they had moved my mum to New Cross,

we lived on the estate, with a bad reputation.

Milton Court Estate.

That's the beginning of Ghetto.

We called ourselves the Ghetto Posse.

But the police created that ghetto where, the way how you policed it

and handled it, you've locked us off into our own little circle.

Back in our day, the police used to pick you up, as a youngster,

and they're not phoning your parents as soon as they pick you up,

they take you down the police station,

or they take you in the back of the van, and they kick hell

out of you, and then they just let you back out on the street.

# Police and thieves in the street... #

Get him up! Stop!

My name is Peter Bleksley. By the late '70s,

at the end of my 18 months in the cadets, I became

the uniformed police constable, and I'm told I'm going to Peckham.

I learnt very quickly that it had a

considerable Afro-Caribbean population.

I've lived in Bexleyheath, I've been trained in Hendon,

I'm a teenager.

Black faces, I think, frightened me.

I... I wasn't familiar.

# The next generation... #

And I pretty quickly learned that there was

a lot of racism within the police force.

People were fitted up with bags of drugs,

people were fitted up with offensive weapons.

What's going on?Sit in the back of my motor and I'll tell you.

And so often, they were young black people.

When I'm walking on the streets at night, they just come and stop me.

They start picking on me and asking me where I'm going, where

do I live, and if you don't answer,

you find yourself in the back of the car. True.

ARCHIVE: In Brixton, there's been a 25% increase

in violent crime - things like robbery and muggings.

The dilemma has been how to respond to repeated calls

for more black policemen.

In uniform, it's really nerve-racking.

But those blacks who do sign up

are often seen as having joined the other side.

I was interested in policing from a really early age,

but at 16, I didn't know what to expect.

And, er, when I told my parents, they looked at each other,

and you could see that there was fear in their eyes.

They knew what the police were about, they knew that they

were racist, they knew.

But they never, ever said anything.

They... All they did was supported me.

When I told my friends, everybody just stood there looking at me.

And one of them just stepped forward,

and he just, like, "Are you fuckin' mad?!" He said,

"Boy, you're going to become a traitor." Looked me up and down.

"You're going to become a traitor."

And I'm, like, a little bit shocked at his reaction.

Are things between you and the police getting better or worse?

Worse. Well, I'd say worse.

I said to the policeman that

you're not supposed to be parked on a double yellow line.

So I carried on walking up Leyton Road

and then he just followed me slowly with his car.

And then he was calling me "black bastard" and

we should go back to our own country, and all this and that.

These are the lifestyles of what we were living back in those days.

We used to get picked up just for loitering.

So, my first day on duty, as I walked in, it just went quiet,

and I could see everybody looking.

Can you produce your appointments, please?

So the Sergeant said, "Right, PC300," which was my number,

"you will be with PC so-and-so."

And all I heard,

"You must be fucking joking."

And you were taught to take your radio and do your signal checks,

like, "Charlie Victor from PC300, can I have a signal check, please?"

And then they're supposed to come back, and all I got was

a barrage of monkey noises that came through that radio.

ARCHIVE: The Evelyn Estate in South East London

is typical of the urban battlegrounds

in which the muggers and their victims meet.

Here, the unemployed youngsters'

impulsive need for cash can easily be gratified.

I put my purse in my shopping bag and I came round to the lift

and pressed the button, and as I did so,

I turned round and this dark fellow followed me in, and I put my

hand in my bag to get my purse out, and it wasn't there to take out.

That old lady, the fear she and her friends have

is the fear of being mugged,

and it's been associated with the new generation of black teenagers

in the capital.

Mugging, it was just seen as being exclusively black,

as though it had been imported into the UK

by black people, and the victims were white women,

and so it became very, very emotive.

I think, as well, one's got to say that there is

a certain element of racism.

Now, I hope that we move away from that, and as black people...

My name is Russell Proffitt, and during the late '70s,

I was working in primary education, and I also was

a local councillor on Lewisham Council.

It really was very, very difficult

to shift the public perception away from the issue of muggings, as such.

It was plastered all over the local newspapers, incidents

were happening everywhere.

When you look at the facts, that was not the case,

and it was a shorthand way, basically,

of saying to young black people, "You will be criminalised."

As the majority of police are white,

might not like black people, you know what I mean? They're always

saying about black youths, mugging old women and all that, so that

sort of brings out prejudice against us.

Who's making a complaint? Who's making a complaint?

At the time, the black community found themselves

the scapegoats for a lot of the ills then taking place.

I think a lot of it is scapegoat politics.

Um, I think that people seem to think that blacks are easy targets.

There was a sort of an arrest spree,

21 young people arrested on suspicion of muggings.

My name's Syd Shelton. I was both an activist and a photographer.

The Metropolitan Police, at five o'clock in the morning,

smashed the doors down of 21 houses and arrested

21 young people.

I heard about it because I was asked to photograph the man

leading the campaign for the freedom of the Lewisham 21,

and some of the people were little more than children.

But it was what inspired the National Front to set up

what they called "the anti-mugging march", which was

scheduled for the 13th of August, 1977.

They proposed to march through New Cross and Lewisham.

The National Front decided that that would be their way

of showing that they were clearing out the neighbourhoods.

Now is the crunch.

It's going to be a test of stamina,

it's going to be test of nerves.

We have got to institute a swift

and immediate programme

of humane repatriation

of all coloured immigrants,

their descendants and their dependents, since the passing

of the British Nationality Act in 1948. It's as simple as that.

Including those born here?

Absolutely, yes.

Including those born here.

The fact that they are born here doesn't make them British.

There is a community that you're part of

that sees you as alien, that sees you as other,

that sees you as momentary, and

we're looking back at our parents

and we're thinking, "Hold on a second, we were born here,

"we ARE British. How can you be applying the same mentality,

"the same mind-set to us?"

My generation, the first-generation UK black,

refuses the National Front,

the British Government and anybody else's calls for repatriation.

How can you send me back from where I came from? I was born here.

I'm going back where?

Well, I was anti-National Front anyway.

We were living in a multicultural society. I found it was different,

it was new, but other people were scared of that.

I used to go and stay at Paul's house, 439 New Cross Road, and

he invited me up there because there was

going to be a National Front march through Lewisham.

ARCHIVE: The march is due to start here, at Clifton Rise.

Most residents say they'll be staying at home,

the odd house is already boarded up,

and the police have advised everyone to keep away from Clifton Rise.

This was, like, about two nights before the march was due.

Paul said, "Let's go and get a kebab." Went into the kebab shop

and this white chap started racially abusing him.

So, Paul picked him up, off his feet,

and he just threw him out in the street.

This guy was then staggering up the road,

and then another guy came flying out the pub,

and he had a crash helmet on,

motorcycle crash helmet on,

and he's gone straight up to Paul,

head-butted him, and then he ran back into the pub.

With this, Paul ran down to his house

and he'd come back with a great big knife, huge knife,

and I said, "Where you going to go with that?"

He said, "I'm going in there after him."

I said, "No, no, no, come on."

Then I realised, you know, the tension,

there was this sort of tension there.

TRAIN HORN

The most difficult policing events for me

to deal with was the National Front demonstrations.

You get on the coach to get down there

and you would have officers from different stations

that were all joined together, and they call it coming on aid,

and at that time we were wearing long rain macs,

so an officer went to put on his long rain mac,

and inside his long rain mac was a National Front badge.

And I looked at him and he just looked at me,

put the thing on and walked off.

He didn't want to hide it.

He just put it on and he walked off. I went, "Wow!"

PROTESTERS CHANT: The National Front is a Nazi front!

Smash the National Front!

The problem was, the police allowed these people to march

through predominantly black areas...

..knowing what it's going to cause.

We'll be moving off in just a minute!

So, they ain't coming past here.

We ain't having it.

You had the teenagers, they're not having it,

because we were born here.

Our parents came out, our big brothers and sisters came out,

Darcus Howe.

Everybody came out,

because we were not going to be intimidated in our own homes.

I know the picture I took of Darcus Howe

standing on the toilet block on Clifton Rise.

He gave a speech which was, basically, "They shall not pass."

We knew there were scores to be settled that day,

we knew it was going to be a big confrontation and a fight,

and we must stand up to this intimidation of the community.

So, it was a National Front march.

CROWD CHANTS

Screaming obscenities,

and screaming racist language across my bows, to the other side.

The National Front is a white men's front!

Join the National Front!

I'm now protecting the National Front people

from being attacked by my own!

CROWD SHOUTS

GLASS SHATTERS

CHANTING: Scum! Scum! Scum!

You know, there's pushing and shoving, and pushing and shoving.

"Why are you protecting them?

"Why are you protecting them? You Judas! You traitor!"

I was, like... I was mixed up.

Nazis!

HE YELLS

All white people ain't the same,

just like all black people ain't the same.

And you got a whole load of English people...

Bastards!

..that don't care whether you're black or you're white.

So, you had a lot of black, white people out there fighting racists.

These are people who are chanting, "If they're black, send them back."

These people have to be confronted and defeated.

And it was very much like... Almost like a medieval battle.

I remember very well, somebody opening the windows

and putting two big speakers there

and putting Bob Marley's Get Up, Stand Up on,

as loud as they could.

#Get up, stand up

# Stand up for your rights

#Get up, stand up

# Stand up for your rights

#Get up, stand up

# Don't give up the fight

EXPLOSION

# Preacher man, don't tell me

# Heaven is under the Earth

# I know you don't know

# What life is really worth... #

During the battle of Lewisham, as everyone likes to call it now,

for the first time we felt empowered to do something about these racists,

and people started fighting back.

REPORTER: The crowd, which had been held back, was angry.

They broke through the police cordon

and then another battle between them and the police flared up.

3,500 police, the most ever seen in London,

have been drafted in for today's violence.

#Get up, stand up

# Don't give up the fight... #

And then you started seeing police on horses,

rushing down towards Peckham way.

# Take away everything

# And make everybody feel high... #

They deployed their entire mounted division,

a quarter of the entire Metropolitan Police.

They also used riot shields for the first time in mainland Britain.

So, they came for a fight.

The police were attacking us.

#Get up, stand up

# Stand up for your rights... #

You couldn't attack us, there were too many of us.

For the first time ever, when the police started fighting,

we were fighting the police.

# We sick an' tired of your ism-schism game

# Dyin' and goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, Lord

# We know when we understand

# Almighty God is a living man

# You can fool some people sometimes

# But you can't fool all the people all the time

# So now we see the light

# We gonna stand up for our rights... #

At one stage a crowd surrounded Lewisham Police Station

and set fire to a motorcycle belonging to a member of the press.

'77 was the year that the racists realised they had a fight.

You know, it really shows what people think.

It just shows how much feeling there is against the National Front.

The majority of people are against them, yeah.

I just think the National Front want someone to blame...

Someone to pick on.

..for what's happening to the country at the moment.

About three or four months later, Moonshot gets burnt down.

REPORTER: On December the 14th,

when the Moonshot project was smoked out of the old mission hall

in Pagnell Street, Deptford, many black people in the area

thought they smelt racialism at work.

Moonshot, it was one of the places

where a lot of black people used to go and congregate again,

and then, six, seven months after that,

I remember the Albany got burnt down.

REPORTER: The Albany Theatre was gutted by fire.

The blaze came only a week after the combination

had staged a series of plays aimed at fostering racial harmony.

People from New Cross went to Moonshot.

People from Deptford went to Albany.

I believe that was a backlash of the Battle of Lewisham.

Petrol bombs were getting thrown, all...

They were taking white spirit and spraying it through letterboxes,

when your house is in darkness, and drop a match through.

Well, that's your exit blocked -

we live in flats, we live in maisonettes.

What you going to do? Jump out the window?

That became a thing, after hours,

that used to happen around Deptford and Lewisham and Peckham,

and places like Brixton.

REPORTER: Last October there was an attempt to burn down the home

of Mr Jamal Singh and his family.

It just was quite frightening. Racial incidents would occur,

and none of these incidents that happened led to any arrests.

There was almost like a feeling that it didn't matter.

I've never heard of anybody getting arrested

for doing one of those firebombs.

Between '77 and '81,

I never heard of not one arrest.

My name is Leila Hassan,

and in 1981 I was a member of the Race Today Collective,

based in Brixton, and we were aware many of the police officers

were National Front sympathisers.

So, when the fascists attacked a lot of book shops,

we had a big campaign against the racist attacks

against radical and black book shops

that was mounted by the fascists at that time.

The National Front is seeking to terrorise us out of existence,

but we recognise the state has a certain responsibility

and we will bring it to the attention of them,

because if you were to arrange self-defence groups here,

you can rest assured that the police would be attacking us

and not...and not the fascists.

In the late '70s, that tension was increasing

across all the major cities

where you have a sizeable black community and black youth.

The state, the police, the media was telling you,

"You're not from here, you don't belong here. Go home."

And so your sense of what is possible is severely challenged.

I was in the band Steel Pulse, a small band in Birmingham.

Our songs were a direct response to the political backdrop of the day.

# Walking along just kicking stones

# Minding my own business

# I come face-to-face with my foe

# Disguised in violence from head to toe... #

And so Ku Klux Klan was a direct conversation, I think, with racism.

# ..let me go now

# To let me go was not dem intention... #

We thought that these lynchings were happening by the police,

and by racist thugs.

# ..the Ku Klux Klan... #

Myself and Alphonso, the other vocalist on stage,

we wore the hoods,

and I thought, "We want to leave you in no doubt of this message,"

and up until that point,

our audience, our biggest audience, was punks.

So, we were wearing Ku Klux Klan hoods

on stage to a punk audience

who, I think, in the first few times we donned the hoods,

the audience just went silent,

and outside our gigs it's the National Front

selling their papers and saying, "Er, it's not about you, mate."

# Hello, Maggie

# Well, hello, Maggie

# Now you're really on the road

# To Number... ALL: ..10. #

Terrific! You can do it on your own!

Britain's at a turning point, and I believe that more trade...

APPLAUSE

Yes, do clap.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Do you see the Tory accusation that Labour has ran Britain down

as a winning strategy?

I think what will decide the electorate's choice

will be, under which party do you think things will get least bad?

There.

What L1 would buy in groceries under the Tory government

in my right BLUE hand.

From now on, both major parties

will field their leaders more or less daily.

I'd like to talk about some of the issues.

I'd like to start on immigration.

We must hold out the prospect of a clear end to immigration.

With the backdrop of national politicians

attempting to exploit the differences

between the communities...

People are really rather afraid

that this country might be rather swamped

by people with a different culture.

..with Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher talked about swamping the culture of the Brits.

But if there is any fear that it might be swamped,

people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in.

I saw Margaret Thatcher, with her statements

about alien cultures swamping this country,

and, personally, I hated her. "What is she talking about?"

In my view, that's one thing

that's driving some people to the National Front.

They don't agree with the objectives of the National Front,

but they say that at least they're talking about some of the problems.

We produced a special issue of Race Today.

We understood that if a British politician

could get up and say that, then, really, our lives

were going to be made much, much more difficult.

REPORTER: The troubles began early, as many of Southall's 30,000 Asians

blocked off every road to the town hall.

National Front bastards!

The National Front was smuggled into the town hall through a back street.

Go back home!

Police arrested 300 people,

and 40 people received hospital treatment.

Blair Peach, a London teacher

and father of two children, was hit so hard on the head that he died.

REPORTER: Opposite the police station,

a small group gathered to protest at the circumstances

of Blair Peach's death.

When I first heard about it, I thought Blair Peach was black!

Because everyone was so animated about that.

The general discussion was,

"Oh, my God, they're killing us on the street now!"

The Southall riots happened while Mrs Thatcher was out of London,

but at her first stop today, in Huddersfield,

she immediately talked about what she called

last night's tragic events.

We totally condemn the racial policies of the National Front,

and we have no sympathy whatsoever with any extremist group.

But you will, then, have a tough new immigration policy,

should you come to power.

I have described what it is.

How you describe what I say is a matter for you.

Hearing what Thatcher was saying,

it felt, because I was born here, that I'm not wanted...

Here comes the Prime Ministerial Rover, bearing, now, Mrs Thatcher.

..and this particular government doesn't want us,

and it felt like they wanted to purge us from the streets.

Even though we were born here,

even though we were as British as anybody.

Paul's family home was 439 New Cross Road.

It's a three-storey Georgian terrace house with a basement,

on a main road.

Paul worked, in the evenings, in a pub in Peckham,

which my brother worked in, and he introduced me to Paul.

We just hit it off straight-away, from then on.

He was fun, free, outgoing.

Everybody that met him said he's such a lovely guy,

he's easy to get on with.

I didn't really know much about Paul meeting Sandra,

but he did tell me he'd met this girl and her name was Sandra,

and he said, "I'm going to marry her."

He asked me to meet him in the pub one evening after work.

Sitting at the bar,

he said, "I've got something really personal to ask you.

"Will you marry me?"

I looked at him, I went, "You're joking!"

I went, "Yeah, OK." I didn't think he was serious!

REPORTER: Lady Diana was saying nothing

about her weekend with Prince Charles

to the assembled press corps.

Lady Diana's nickname at school was "Shy Di".

Is she shy?

I believe she is slightly shy.

So few people seem to know anything about her.

I'm not going to say anything.

Oh, sorry! Prince Charles did give us a hint himself.

He said we wouldn't have to wait too long.

Oh, careful!

These are my wedding photos of mine and Paul.

We got married the 19th of July 1980.

That's a nice photo. I like that one of me and him.

It was a lovely day.

He was blowing in my face in this photo.

SHE CHUCKLES

Lady Diana is a good choice, and her father,

her uncle, Lord Fermoy, and others, have even vouched for her virginity.

She fits the bill in a number of ways, yes.

Obviously, she is going to be bearing kings of England.

Sandra was expecting.

She already had a daughter, called Vivien.

That's my Vivien, and Paul.

And he was quite excited about having a baby

and taking the responsibility.

After he had his motorbike accident,

he was told that he might not ever be able to father children,

so when I found out I was pregnant with Janine,

he was absolutely over the moon.

He couldn't believe it.

That's a picture with his sister Yvonne.

She had the nicest personality you could ever dream of.

Yvonne had actually said to me and Paul,

"I'm going to ask Mum if I can have a birthday party.

"What do you think Mum will say?"

Paul said, "We'll see what we can do."

Her friend Angela was actually 18

the same day she was 16, and they were friends at school,

so could they combine two birthdays?

So, that's what they did.

Yvonne was my brother's girlfriend, my brother David.

Yvonne used to frequent our house.

When she used to come round, we used to play tunes in the house.

She liked lovers rock.

I remember David giving her some record called At The Club.

That tune was kicking at the time, Victor Romero.

Tune.

# You wanna go get in the groove

# At the club... #

David and Yvonne, they got together not long before the party,

because I remember it was because they were seeing each other

is why I was allowed to go.

I remember her standing in the kitchen,

and she said to my mum, could Denise come to the party,

could Denise and Andrew come to the party?

She was friendly with Andrew and Denise.

"Remember, you have to come to my party,

"and if you don't come to my party, don't talk to me any more."

You know? And they were talking about the party.

They were talking about it all the time.

I declare Christmas season open!

CROWD CHEERS

I heard about the party at Christmas.

I was going to stay for Christmas with Paul,

and he said, "Oh, I'm going up to Rugby.

"Can you bring my mum up?"

So, a couple of days later I picked his mum up

and drove her up to Rugby, as well.

Armza Ruddock. I was introduced to her as Auntie Gee,

but, yeah, Armza Ruddock.

She was the mother of Yvonne Ruddock and Paul Ruddock.

Auntie Gee's family, in Rugby, lived three doors away from us,

so when she came to see her mum's side of the family,

they came there, and they must have said,

"Well, your dad's side of the family, the Ruddocks,

"actually live three doors up, down the road,"

so when they came and knocked our door,

they went, "Oh, my God," and told us about the party.

"Oh, we're going to have a party next year, do you want to come?"

We were getting to know each other,

the whole party was getting to know each other's family,

because we didn't know each other before,

we didn't even know we had that family in London.

My sound system played at the party,

so we knew about the party

from the time that they started to put it together.

I wanted to have something to identify for myself,

so me and my friends at school, we created the sound.

Steve, Gerry and myself, we fudged this thing together.

Steve Collins - we used to call him Brillo in school.

He had a great big afro, and it was just wiry,

and Steve's dad, a guy they used to call Sir Collins,

he had a sound system. He gave us our first set of bass boxes.

Gerry Francis, again, he was into his music.

So, either me and Steve, or me and Gerry, or Gerry and Steve

were always together.

If you lived in an area, and you was a black person,

you knew the black people.

Yvonne's a well-known, well-liked person.

If we give her one of the best parties of the year,

at the beginning of the year,

then everybody else is going to want to employ us

for the rest of the year,

because Yvonne's party was, "Yeah, that was the party."

On the day of the party,

I remember my brother Andrew,

I remember taking him to this barber's shop

and, you know, he had his afro haircut.

He was so pleased, you know,

because the hair was ready now, you know what I mean?

And my sister Denise, Denise was quite excited,

I remember her in a suit she had on.

Mate, I was mad excited!

I didn't know, really, what to expect of the party.

I just knew, "I'm going to party!"

DOORBELL RINGS

We got there just after about half past eight.

Everybody was running around, and people were being served drinks

and food was being cooked.

My mother-in-law made curry goat, rice and peas, chicken.

My daughter Viv was in every room, everywhere.

When we went to the party, I mean, I dropped them off there first.

I think it must have been about half nine or something.

I mean, it was a really nice house.

I mean, you could see that the house was really well looked after.

The party was on the first floor.

The front room on the ground floor, and the kitchen, is one big room,

and it's got concertina wooden doors that used to slide open,

but that evening the doors were closed.

The front room was special.

We hardly ever used the front room.

Where the party was,

was actually my mother-in-law's bedroom.

So, that was all cleared out,

all the furniture was down in the basement,

and you had to come to the kitchen

if you wanted a drink or you wanted food.

# Let me be that someone very special... #

We had the whole thing.

The crowd was going, the vibes was nice, the music was right.

# Let me be the one... #

I remember thinking, "This party's amazing,"

because, obviously, I'm used to... My brothers played music,

so I knew all the tunes, do you know what I mean?

All the lovers rock tunes.

# Let me be that someone very special... #

My sister was dancing with this guy all night, called Frank,

and they were rubbing up, scrubbing up, as you want to call it,

all night long, and I'm thinking, "What's he doing with my sister?!"

But it's a party.

# Now I've got something to say... #

You know what? It's funny, music can tell the story of my life.

# Sha la la la la... #

The track for '81 is definitely Jean Adebambo, Paradise.

# Sometimes I sit down and I wonder... #

At the time, Jean Adebambo's song was like one of those songs,

it was one of the big lovers rock tunes.

One of my favourite tunes,

my girlfriend's favourite tune at the time.

My girlfriend at the time was Rosaline Henry.

I remember, when we played that tune,

she took the microphone and she was singing it,

like, it's the man feeling great cos she's looking at me singing,

and she's got the mic in her hand, sort of like...

She had a good voice. She could sing.

# You make my life such a paradise... #

I was in and out of that party,

because remember, the party was a 16-year-old's party.

Right? And we were, like, 18, 19.

But one or two of my friends were there,

and I remember standing on the stairs,

I remember I was talking to Lloyd Hall for quite some time.

The party was great, it was a good party.

You had generations coming in at different times,

so you had the younger ones, who were there from the beginning...

..and then you had the older ones who were coming in

for Angela's side of the party,

and they're coming in at, like, 12 o'clock.

So, loads of people were there.

You had to squeeze past people going up the stairs.

I stayed downstairs most of the evening.

The older adults were there, in the kitchen,

they were having their, sort of, own little party in the kitchen.

Paul was just generally keeping an eye

on who was coming into the house.

It got to about half past three,

and my Viv was really overtired, and I took Viv home.

I don't know no more, until about 8:30, when my door went.

Richard had come a couple of times to pick us up,

but this will tell you how good the party was, we were not ready.

The first time he came,

we were like, "No, we're having too much fun!"

Second time, "We're having too much fun!"

And then, when he came the last time,

I couldn't find my bag.

Denise and Andrew were quite close together

and doing a lot of stuff together,

so I didn't really feel that there was anything wrong.

I remember David was there, as well,

and we weren't new to the Ruddock house.

You know, it was getting about sort of five o'clock in the morning,

that sort of time,

so, I thought, "All right, I'll just go and sit in the front room,"

and I think a group of girls came in, about five girls.

I remember them, like, asking if I had a cigarette or something.

Andrew was just sitting there, I think he was a bit tired...

..but mainly we was just sitting there, just talking.

And then they left, and I thought, "All right, I'll get up."

At 5:30 in the morning,

I could still see people dancing.

It wasn't just a couple of people in a room,

we still had a lot of people in there.

The last track I remember being played

was Kingdom Rise and Kingdom Fall...

# Yes! #

..by Wailing Souls.

Kingdom Rise and Kingdom Fall...

# Kingdom rise and kingdom fall... #

In the kitchen, Paul's mum, Armza,

out of the blue, she just said... She said something to Leslie Morris.

"Go and check on... Go and check."

And he went out the room, and he come back,

said, "Look at this!"

WHOOSH OF FLAMES

The ground floor front room was totally ablaze.

People ran out into the street.

I remember... I think it was Paul's mum

shouting up the stairs, "Fire! Fire!"

The window exploded - bang!

And there was, like, glass flying everywhere, you know?

You had to run into the road.

And Paul was next to me.

He said to me, "Where's Yvonne?

"Have you seen Yvonne?"

I said, "No, I think she's still in there, Paul!"

With that, he said, "Stay here,"

and he just ran straight into the house.

# Kingdom rise and kingdom fall... #

I started to smell something, like burning,

but something getting blown, an amplifier blowing or something,

was a regular occurrence,

and I remember saying to Steve Collins,

like, "Smell that. Can you smell that?"

And he was like, "Yeah, it smells like something burning.

"Let me go and have a look behind the case,"

where we keep all the amplifiers.

I think Gerry was probably still in the record box,

searching for the next tune, sort of thing.

So I said, "You know what? I'm going to go and get a drink.

"You want something?" And that was it, and I went off.

That's the last time I saw everybody.

# ..modern famine

# Speaking about human rights... #

I've come down the first set of stairs, turned the balcony,

and when I saw the smoke, I turned round and ran back upstairs.

I remember going back into the room and shouting, "Fire!"

For which, I believe, Paul had been in the room already.

# Kingdom rise and kingdom fall... #

We were in the party and Paul came in,

and Paul came in, and he shouted "Fire!"

And there must have been some kind of, like, whether it was the fire

behind him or whatever, like a silhouette on him,

and when I looked at him properly, you could see the soot on his hair.

You could see stuff in his hair, and that was the last time I saw him.

But that would mean that Paul either passed me

coming up the stairs or passed me coming down the stairs.

Don't remember that.

# Yeah! #

MUSIC STOPS

Everything's gone out, there's no electric,

I can't see anybody, I don't know what's going on...

..and all hell broke loose.

People started to panic, right?

So, you want to get to the window, people are pushing you back,

and it's panic.

What I... What I remember, and what I saw,

was like watching an old Charlie Chaplin movie,

a black-and-white Charlie Chaplin movie,

where, you know, everything looks like it's going in slow motion,

but it's going really fast.

Like, you've got people screaming and shouting,

and you've got people going to try and climb out a window,

and other people pulling them back. It...

The whole place just went mad.

And I remember it getting really hot.

And it was coming up, heat was coming up, from underneath,

and it was just getting hotter, and, do you know what?

I remember standing there, doing this,

thinking, like... I'm wiping the...

Sweating. Wiping sweat.

And...

..turns out, later on, that that sweat was actually my skin

that was peeling off of my face, like that.

It felt like it was... like I'd got sand all over my face.

And the more I wiped it, the more the skin kept coming off of my face.

I remember when I put my head out the window,

I was getting burnt, and in the confusion

I was thinking, "Why am I getting burnt?"

And I'll never forget, the floor felt spongy to me, it felt spongy.

I was at the top of the house, and it's a three-storey house.

So I was at the top, in the back,

when I heard someone shout "Fire!" from downstairs,

as they were running up the stairs.

We could hear someone shouting, "Fire! Fire! Fire!"

But it all happened so quickly.

Yvonne started to run downstairs, shouting for her mum.

David then ran after her,

and I looked at Andrew. David went that way.

It just seemed like seconds before it was just thick black smoke.

You can't see anything, you can't breathe, and you can't...

It's the thickest smoke.

I remember

there was about four people, just standing up on that wall,

just leaning, like, in shock.

They didn't know where to go, what to do.

They was just standing there.

And I remember turning like that, looking at them,

looking at the window, and the chaos and the mayhem that was going on,

from people trying to get out of the window.

And I just grabbed my coat back on and I just opened the door

and went running through the fire and went...

Tried to get upstairs.

And I just remember going, feeling my way through the smoke...

..falling over, tripping up, scared, really, really, really scared.

The heat from the smoke is so intense,

I can remember feeling like I'm being pushed, you know,

like we're all trying to fight to get to this one window.

I'm only 11,

and I remember thinking that I haven't even lived my life,

do youknow what I mean?

I've not even lived my life, and now this is it,

do youknow what I mean?

There was some guys trapped in...

I think they must have run up to the top floor,

and they were having trouble getting the windows open.

And I can remember these guys kicking the windows out

and literally taking a run and jump,

coming flying out the windows.

And they had to jump because there were railings,

and they...they obviously realised they had to...

I jumped out of the second-floor window, but, erm...

..I remember I crawled onto the ledge, the ledge,

and I thought to myself, you can't jump out...

..because, at the front of the house,

you had spikes at the front of the...the gates, you had spikes,

so if you jumped out, you could have landed on the spikes,

so I just jumped out and jumped straight down.

I only hurt my arm.

Cos my arm couldn't come down.

That's all I remember - my arm was up there,

and that was it. I went to the hospital

with my arm up there, for some reason,

but that was my only injury I had.

So, I was like a little cat.

Desmond Brown was like a cat.

He got out there. So, we were lucky.

But other people weren't so lucky.

I think I was trying to, obviously, navigate my way out of this window

when, next thing you know, I'm being lifted.

It's like I was coming down the drainpipe with somebody,

and then, halfway down, I heard someone say -

that's the last thing I can remember -

someone say, "You're on your own now,"

and then I remember falling and hitting, on my back.

Eventually, I got to the top of the stairs,

I remember falling over twice,

and when I got to the window,

there was already a guy on the window ledge.

He climbed out, and I went right behind him.

I was like, "Whatever's happening, I ain't dying."

I went straight behind him,

and I went out the window. Stood on the window ledge,

feeling for a drainpipe now, because my eyes were hurting, my...

Everything's just going mad. I'm...

Adrenaline's flowing, I can't think straight.

I found myself a drainpipe...

..grabbed hold of it and started climbing down.

I think my head just about got below the level

of what would be the window ledge

and the drainpipe just pulled away from the wall.

I ended up falling down and going straight through the roof

of an old outside toilet.

CRASH

I've landed on my right leg,

and my right leg ended up in my chest.

I'd smashed my hip into 100-odd pieces, broke my thigh,

broke my shin, smashed my foot up.

I see Yvonne jump out the window. She looked badly injured.

I was getting really worried. I thought, "Paul hasn't come out."

SIRENS WAIL

The fire brigade seemed to turn up in minutes.

The guy jumped out. I don't know why he come over to me,

he come running over to me

and he said, "Is there anyone in there?"

and I said, "Yeah, it's full of young kids."

And they went straight in, and I thought, "Oh, thank God for that."

So I'm then waiting there,

outside the house, in the middle of the road,

and I see Paul being brought out on a ladder.

They used the ladder as a stretcher.

They put him straight in the back of the ambulance.

They said, "Get in, go with him."

When I came to, there was a person either side of me,

and I remember one of them, was saying, "Help me,"

but I was thinking...

All I kept thinking about is, "Where are my brothers?

"What's happened to David? What's happened to Andrew? Where are they?"

No-one could tell me anything.

Do you know what I mean? It was just horrible.

My sister, Claudette Ruddock, before the fire started,

she saw somebody in a white car throw something in the house.

So, a lot of people believed it was definitely a racist fire,

a fire attack on that party.

That's what they believed, and all of us believed that.

100%. Well, why wouldn't you?

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