NEW CROSS FIRE
When I headed home from a blues dance or party in Brixton, I was sometimes mocked by reggae-heads cruising by in their Cortina Mark IIs, Triumph Dolomites, and Ford Capris. “Trodder!” they would yell in my direction. “Do you want a lift?” they would shout, before pressing down on the accelerator. I believe this prank was inspired by a scene in Saturday Night Fever. Laughter would trail in their slipstream.
Occasionally, the teasing as I walked home would take a more sinister turn. “Nigger!” a white guy would scream as he sped by with his mates in a Volkswagen Beetle or a Mini.
It was all part of my weekend experience in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At least I always made it home. Some were not so fortunate.
I learned about the New Cross Fire when I was in Soferno B’s record shack on the Monday morning following the tragedy. A Brixton lineman said, “White mon fling firebomb inna de yard. De place ketch ah fire. Nuff sufferah dead. Me gwaan wet up de neck of ah racist white mon tonight. See if me don’t! Bloodclaat devil people dem!”
A forlorn shadow marked the faces of every reggae-head I saw that day. That initial sadness quickly turned into anger.
The New Cross Fire occurred on January 18, 1981, at a birthday party for two teenage girls. I had recently turned eighteen myself.
“Wheats! You’re now old enough for the beast to keep you and beat you inna cell for more than twenty-four hours,” a bredren warned. “Mind where you step. Resist any arrest. Don’t let the beast corner you inna cell.”
Everyone was convinced the New Cross Fire catastrophe was a racist attack. Many of us had been subjected to racist abuse in school, our places of work, on the streets, and by the police.
Prior to the tragedy, the nearby Moonshot Centre youth club, which many young Black people attended, mysteriously went up in flames. The Albany arts center, a hub for young Black creatives, suffered the same fate.
Black New Cross and Lewisham felt under attack.
Every reggae-head knew that it could have been any one of them who had lost their life. Many of us believed it was the police who launched a firebomb into the house.
Before I had reached the age of eighteen, I had been beaten up by the police twice and racially insulted by officers more times than I can remember. As far as I was concerned, they were more than capable of such a despicable act.
The Black People’s Day of Action march, scheduled for March 2, 1981, was a protest against the unsatisfactory police investigation into the fire. I couldn’t join the start of the demonstration in Deptford because I had a job interview that morning (I wasn’t successful), and after that I jumped on a 109 bus to Waterloo.
I heard the rally near Blackfriars Bridge before I joined it.
I was astonished. An endless mass of Black faces made its way toward the bridge. Banners held aloft. Afros, dreadlocks, weatherman caps, and tams. Thirteen dead, nothing said! they chanted as one. I have never felt as empowered as I did on that day. I hardly recognized any of the people around me, but a surge of Black pride and belonging filled me. I raised my fist and offered my voice: Thirteen dead, nothing said!
It was clear the police didn’t want us to cross the bridge. Someone spoke through a loudspeaker and said the route had already been arranged with the authorities. I felt the Black tsunami behind me. It ebbed forever forward. They didn’t have enough numbers to hold us back. In their desperation, they attacked protesters at the front of the rally. Batons drawn and fists clenched, they lashed out. We fought back with interest. Running battles ensued. Panic stamped their expressions; we broke through their ranks.
Halfway across the bridge I was rugby-tackled to the ground. As I wriggled and threw a punch to free myself, a fellow protester came to my assistance and kicked the officer off my back. We exchanged knowing smiles. He who feels it knows it.
“The niggers are in the city,” a policeman barked into his radio. “There are millions of ’em!”
Racist abuse was also hurled down from upstairs offices: “Why don’t you fuck off back to your jungle!”
“Why don’t you get your white bombaclaat raas down here and say that to my face?” a sufferah shot back.
The invitation wasn’t accepted.
“You don’t belong here!”
Monkey chants followed.
The situation was incredibly tense.
March stewards attempted to calm our responses to the racial abuse.
I started to fret about my chances of making it back home to Brixton. The Brixton police are brutal, city beast might be worse. There was safety in numbers. Stay with the march, Alex, I told myself.
“Why aren’t there more police to control the coons?” someone called from above.
At times, it was hard not to react, race into an office block, smash a window, and wreak vengeance.
Linton Kwesi Johnson’s “New Crass Massahkah” perfectly summarized the New Cross Fire in compelling dub poetry: Physically scarred, the mentally marred … I had already become aware of LKJ from “Sonny’s Lettah,” where he relates the story of a young Black man’s arrest.
On the evening of March 2, 1981, when I made it safely back to Brixton, something had changed. I could see it in the faces of fellow sufferahs who rode the bus with me.
Yes, we can stand firm and put up resistance. If there will be blood, then mek it run. We’re more than ready.