ACTiON ON THE NIGHT of Sunday 6 October 500 riot police placed Totlenham's Broadwater Fram estate under siege. Having caused the death of Cynthia Jarrett after breaking into her home in nearb! Thorpe Road, they were determined to stop Tottenham's youth, who had been meeting on the estate with community leaders to discuss their response, taking their protest to the streets of Tottenham. The result was the most serious civil conflict this century. Police and media reaction has been unequivocal: they want to crush black people, and youth with gas and bullets. The whole labour movement must defend the black communities against this racist outrage. Socialist Action looks at the escalating spiral of racism, deprivation and repression which led to the siege of Broadwater Farm, the latest but not the last of the inner-city revolts produced by Thatcher's Britain.
BROADWATER Farm Estate was heralded when it as Today architectural nightmare. Three quarters 2.2IV residents dependent on state benefits bullet.
Unemployment, which averaces zo per cent in the Tottenham area, rose by 19 per cent in the immediate area of the estate last year alone. 60 per cent of the half the families are single parent, Is unemployed Today, as councillor Steve Banerji explained, it is under martial law. Eight LIC coaches, holding four hundred police, are parked in the estate's main approach Squads of ten and twent march in and out ol the estate, or stand guard at the stairways to its complex network of walkways like an army of occupation.
On Mondav night the police turned it into a battlefield. They sealed off the estate when youth, meeting protest at the killing of Cynthia Jarrett, ended their debate to march Tottenham police station. 500 police in riot gear, CS gas and plastic bullets standing by, placed it under siege.
But for Broadwater Farm, half of whose On Tuesday residents are black, a battle for survival has been in pro gress lot lar longer tnan the last few days. Before the the estimates that £1.75m was needed for maintenance and the correction of detects. It has just over a third of this to spend on housing in the whole of lottennam Even with these limited resources, it managed, working jointly with the estate's Association, to set up three community co-ops with two more in the pipeline, and the many community Crude a hildren estay in- projects the estate inplayground, nursery and an after-school club. In addition the Youth which opened become the whose hopes of a future have been destroyed by six years of Thatcherism.
The estate's black peohave been singled out in the last few weeks tor unasham unceasing police The racist nature of their behaviour is blatant. As Bernie Grant exBroadwater Farm estate in the last few weeks we have had police stopping black occupants of cars and allowing whites to go through. Last night, during the situation, police stopped black people leaving the estate and allowing white people to leave. That is racism.
Sunday night's revolt was only the most recent episode in a fifteen-year battle, against deprivation, against racism, against the .combined effects of Thatcher's rule.
But the youth of TotHandsworth, in Brixton, in the conditions exist the same TeNDOUSE is the inevitable result.