We want to Riot not to work

Description

“Between Friday, 10th April, 1981,  and Monday April 13th April 1981,
serious disorder occurred in Brixton… when large numbers of persons,
predominantly black youths, attacked police, police vehicles (many of
which were totally destroyed), attacked the Fire Brigade, destroyed
private premises and vehicles by fire, looted, ransacked and damaged
shops…”

After more than a decade of repeated attacks, arrests, harassment,
beatings, racist provocations by the local police and the Special Patrol
Group, Brixton erupted in a massive uprising. The riot – followed by more
in July, part of a nationwide wave of disorder – shocked the British
state. Though quickly labelled ‘race riots’ by the press, in fact blacks
and whites had fought side by side, in the first anti-police riots for
more than a century.
We Want to Riot, Not to Work (originally published in 1982) combines
rip-roaring personal accounts of the riots from unashamed participants,
with a radical analysis of their causes, and the response of the
authorities.