I wander thro’ each charter’d street – Inquiries into Psychogeography by Group 2
Rediscovering ‘Britain’s Harlem’ through oral history
By Deborah Hobson
Theories and methods surrounding psychogeography have provided a framework in which I can explore in a creative and political way the idea of place in relation to physical connections, memory and oral history. This is an introduction to a future project which will examine through a series of interview recordings, audio and visual, individuals from different generations who are African Caribbean, and their relationship, past and present, with the area of Brixton in south west London.
These oral history accounts will underpin additional research using resources like the Brixton-based Black Cultural Archives. They will give valuable insight into a place that has been steeped in Black culture and era defining, tumultuous events that have impacted on people’s lives as well as local and national government policy particularly, in relation policing.
I interviewed Veteran Black anti-racism campaigner, journalist, author and documentary filmmaker Marc Wadsworth about Brixton, its momentous history, gentrification and its cultural relevance. His words have been used by me to create an image – a symbol of resistance and resilience – the Black Power fist.
DH: How would you describe the area of Brixton?
MW: It has been called ‘Britain’s Harlem’, reflecting that, like the New York neighbourhood famed for its African American political and cultural activism, Brixton saw Caribbeans, particularly Jamaicans, settle in the south London district from 1948 onwards and change the face of it. My father was one of them. As a teenager, he had joined the Royal Air Force in Jamaica, which was under British rule. In 1944, he landed in England, to fight in the Second World War, along with thousands of other Caribbean volunteers. Deborah and me made a BBC film about it.
My father was demobbed from military service two years later and sent back to Jamaica. Then he responded to ‘the call’ to return to rebuild the ‘Mother Country’, which had been devastated by war, and sailed on the now celebrated Empire Windrush ship to England, with almost 500 other Caribbean passengers. On arrival, many of them were shamefully housed in bunk beds deep under Clapham Common – hidden from sight – from where they were sent to Brixton Labour Exchange to find work. There was such a public outcry about this mistreatment of Black war veterans, taken up in parliament by the supportive local Jewish MP Marcus Lipton, they were found rented homes in Somerleyton Road, thus beginning the Caribbean presence in Brixton. The veterans went on to find work on buses and in factories, establish the West Indian Ex-Servicemen’s club in Clapham, and change the popular culture of the area, with their food, clothing, music and anti-racist politics.
DH: What do you think have been the most momentous periods in Brixton’s history?
MW: Obviously, the settlement of Caribbean people in the area from 1948 onwards was a milestone. But, so was the 1981 ‘uprising’ by Black youths, supported by white allies, including squatters, whom local Black Panther Olive Morris had backed. The radical Black Race Today Collective was based in Brixton’s Railton Road ‘frontline’. It’s luminaries included Darcus Howe, featured in the recent Steve McQueen ‘Mangrove’ film, Laila Hassan, Farrukh Dhondy and Linton Kwesi Johnson.
I lived in Brixton at the time. The Brixton ‘riots’, as politicians and their media friends called them, were sparked by massive police stop and search and brutality against the youth as part of the Met’s notorious ‘Operation Swamp’. Brixton erupted when the youth decided that ‘Enough is enough’. There was an old ‘Sus’ law, dating from the 19th century, originally aimed at clearing ‘vagrants’ from the streets, that gave the police the power to pick on the youth. After a big anti-Sus campaign, it was got rid of. The uprising resulted in the government setting up the Scarman public inquiry, which criticised the police but fell short of calling them out as ‘institutionally racist’. We had to wait for the Macpherson report of 1999, into the botched police investigation into the racist murder of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence, for that to happen. I set up the Justice for Stephen Lawrence campaign with his parents. In July, 2016, I took part in a Black Lives Matter demo in Brixton and instigated a successful direct action sit-in on the main road that lasted until midnight. Historian and community activist ‘Kwaku’ turned it into a short documentary film.
DH: Brixton has experienced a lot of change structurally and in the make-up of its residents, often referred to as gentrification. What are your thoughts about this?
MW: Today, the place has been gentrified, with people like me moving out to homes even further from central London than Brixton, which is popular as the last station on the Victoria tube line. A three-bedroomed house can sell for as much as a million pounds and there are more white yuppies than Black people and businesses in the area. There are now two Black women MPs that represent the people of Brixton, and there’s the Black Cultural Archives tucked away in a corner of a space called Windrush Square. But I still think Brixton, our Harlem, has lost its soul.
DH: Culturally, what does Brixton mean to you and what can it offer others?
Brixton’s history of Black resistance still means a lot to me and many other people. That’s why Caribbean markets and other events are held in Windrush Square, including the annual Afrikan Reparation march. When I was leader of the Labour Party Black Sections in the 1980s, my vice-chair councillor Linda Bellos was elected leader of Lambeth council, which covers Brixton. As a result, we got a monument to the victims of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre put in Windrush Square, to commemorate the young Pan Africanist Congress of Azania protesters who were murdered by the racist South African apartheid regime. A couple of years ago, a monument to the African and Caribbean veterans of the two world wars was also put up. There’s a Max Roach Park, named after the African American bebop pioneer drummer. But, while putting up monuments and naming places after Black heroes is important, political action for change is needed too. For example, while Lambeth town hall staff are a majority Black, they are in the lowest, most insecure jobs – the last to be hired and first to be fired. I have supported their protests about that. It needs fixing, along with so many other examples of racism, like police deaths in custody, and the Windrush generation ‘hostile environment’ scandal Black people in Brixton and elsewhere continue to face.
Ends.