IT is Friday afternoon in Southall, west London. Cars pass along the high street while the shops bustle with customers preparing for the coming weekend. It is a typical suburban scene in early August, in other words. But it wasn’t always this way. Watching all this is Poko, singer with Misty In Roots, who remembers exactly how Southall looked 33 years ago.
“This was one end of a no-go area set up by the police,” he says, brow furrowing as he gestures towards the traffic. “No-one could come down this road at all.”
Fatefully, Misty In Roots lived just outside the police cordon, in a squat at 6 Park View Road. The house was also the base for their community organisation and record label as well as providing a rehearsal space for around 40 local musicians. On April 23, 1979, however, it became the place where a community came together to defend itself.
“There were police horses everywhere,” Poko recalls, with palpable emotion in his voice. “Special Patrol Group in riot gear. There was no way to get out, so everyone came inside… the organisations, the politicians, Indians, local lawyers, everybody. Then police let all the politicians out, then all the white people, then the Indians. Then they went inside and beat up all the black people. It was a free-for-all. They smashed up all our equipment, destroyed all our records and beat everybody up.”
The events at 6 Park View Road were the culmination of a long day of violence. Earlier, the National Front had held a demonstration in the centre of Southall, one of the most racially diverse areas in London. A petition to stop the meeting had received 10,000 signatures, but was unsuccessful, so 2,750 police officers had been deployed to protect the far-right party’s right to assembly, in the face of around 3,000 community and Anti-Nazi League protestors. In the ensuing clashes, 345 people were arrested and charged. later reported, “Nearly every demonstrator had blood flowing from some sort of injury.”
