Word: tottenham
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ideas shaped by Angela Davis and the black-power movement," she says. Grant, who heads the local council in Haringey, has been unflatteringly labeled Barmy Bernie by conservative tabloids. It was he who declared that police had been given a "bloody good hiding" after a 1985 race riot in Tottenham during which a patrolman was hacked to death. Grant has since kept a relatively low profile...
...there seemed to be limits to the violence. No police had been killed, and although rioters had thrown rocks and gasoline bombs, they had never used guns. All that changed in a few fierce hours last week when angry rioters, mostly blacks, rampaged through the north London neighborhood of Tottenham. A dozen youths hacked a policeman to death with machetes, and others fired shotguns, rifles and pistols at the police...
...events brought a quick response from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party. At the Tories' annual conference in Blackpool, which opened two days after the Tottenham disturbance, Home Secretary Douglas Hurd proposed a law making the commission of a crime while carrying a firearm punishable by life imprisonment. The rioters and looters, Hurd declared, were motivated by "greed and the excitement of violence." In her speech to the delegates, Thatcher concurred, saying, "This is crime masquerading as social protest...
...violence in Tottenham was the worst in memory. In addition to the policeman's grisly death, 223 other officers and 20 civilians were injured, some 50 cars were set ablaze, one store was fire-bombed, and another was looted. The violence was ignited after police, searching for stolen goods, raided a black woman's house. While the police were still there the woman collapsed, and later died on the way to the hospital. Her family contended that she suffered a heart attack after officers pushed her to the floor. A day after word of her death spread through the neighborhood...
...firearms. One policeman in 10 is now authorized to carry a gun; in London, the ratio is 1 in 5. The shootings have hardened resentment among blacks who accuse the mostly white police force of insensitivity and racism. That lingering bitterness was evident the day after the Tottenham riot. Bernie Grant, a black Marxist who heads the local borough council, not only refused to condemn the killing of the officer but declared that the police had received "a bloody good hiding." The remark outraged much of the country. But it was especially embarrassing for Neil Kinnock, leader of the opposition...