Brixton
The riots that erupted in Brixton, London in April, 1981 were the worst Britain had ever seen. Bad blood had been building for years due to heavy-handed policing and the dubious tactics of the notorious Special Patrol Group: random stop-and-search under the 'Sus' laws had created a constant atmosphere of simmering violence. The area had just seen Operation Swamp 81, a police attempt to curb local robbery and burglary. During six days, officers stopped almost 1,000 people, mostly black, arresting 118. On the evening of the 10th, police arrived at the scene of a stabbing to question the young, black victim. As they tried to get him into a police car an angry crowd tried to intervene. The police were attacked with bottles and bricks, but eventually managed to calm the situation. But the trouble had not really begun. The following day police hugely increased their numbers patrolling the streets. When the police stopped and tried to search a man outside a minicab office on Railton Road - the 'Frontline' as it was known - angry citizens pelted the officers with bricks. A police van was over-turned and torched and shop windows were smashed. As afternoon turned into evening the violence and disorder increased in intensity. At one point it is estimated that over 5,000 people were causing chaos on the street of south London. Pubs, businesses and even schools were burned and looted as the police struggled to cope with the fury. Finally, by 1am, huge numbers of reinforcements brought the area under control. When all was said and done, 279 police and 45 civilians were injured, over one 100 cars were burned, 150 buildings were damaged and 30 were torched. And that same year saw serious rioting in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds.
New Mexico Penitentiary
They called it The Hate Factory, and when violence erupted at The New Mexico State Penitentiary on February 2nd, 1980, it lived up to its name. For over 30 hours some of the most brutal criminals in America had control of their prison: gangs fought gangs, inmates killed rivals, old scores were settled with awful finality. The mob were savage and out of control. Axes, electric drills and sanders were used on victims, with other inmates pausing to take photographs with Polaroid cameras. When the last hostage - a guard - was released and asked how bad it had been inside the prison he couldn't speak, and simply broke down in tears. Horribly, although the death toll was 33, many other inmates 'remain missing,' probably burned in the fires. Dozens of inmates were raped. What caused the rioting? Years of abuse, corruption, and filthy, overcrowded conditions. But perhaps also simple opportunistic brutality: two guards were seized by inmates drunk on cell-made hooch, and from there things took their savage turn. Drugs were looted from the pharmacy and a 'Hit Squad' stormed Cellblock 4, where protected prisoners like snitches and paedophiles were housed for their own protection. One inmate was held out of a window and killed with a blowtorch in full view of reporters and prison officers. Almost everything made from wood was burned. Amongst the ashes after the prisoners surrendered were body parts and a torso with no head. Another corpse had an iron bar rammed through his head from ear to ear. Many lacked arms and legs, and one hanged corpse had the word RAT carved into his chest. Said Colonel Bill Fields, commanding officer of the National Guardsmen: "I was in World War II, and I've seen mutilated bodies. I don't remember anything as bad as this."
Los Angeles, 1992
The video evidence looked clear, and was beamed around the world: Rodney King, following a high-speed chase with the LAPD, was stunned with a tazer and beaten with batons. The jury didn't quite see it that way: on April 29th, 1992, they acquitted two white police officers of assault. What the public didn't see was the first 13 seconds of the tape in which King charged the police, alledgedly high on PCP. It probably wouldn't have made any difference: it was not just the acquittal that set of South Central LA: years of aggressive, racist policing and social deprivation had turned the area into time bomb. A crowd gathered at the LA County Court as soon as the verdict was announced at 3.15pm. This was generally peacefully. A bigger crowd in South Central faced down the police just before six o'clock. Shortly after the police fled the crowd began looting shops, burning vehicles and attacking mainly white and Hispanic civilians. Filmed almost entirely from the outset, often from helicopters, the riot provided some disturbing images: truck driver Reginald Denny was pulled from his cab and savaged by a mob, who even smashed his head with a breeze block as he lay unconscious - all caught on news TV cameras. Denny was not saved by the police, who had been ordered to withdraw from the area, but by an African-American named Bobby Green Jr, who saw the assault on live TV. Running to the area, he drove Denny to hospital where he was saved after brain surgery. Fidel Lopez was beaten, nearly had his ear sliced off and had his genitals, chest and torso painted black after he lost consciousness. Others were not so lucky: fifty-three people died and the looting and arson over the six days of unrest caused damage estimated at billion.
Detroit 1967
In Detroit they called after-hours drinking clubs 'blind pigs.' It was the blind pig on the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue that police raided in the early hours of the morning on July 23rd, 1967. They got quite a surprise. Expecting to find a few drunken patrons the police found 82 partiers celebrating the return of two Vietnam War vets. Instead of being diplomatic, the notoriously racist DPD 'Tac Squad' decided to arrest everyone. An angry crowd remonstrated with the police and from this flashpoint five days of rioting raged across Detroit, which would leave 43 people dead, 1189 injured and 7000 arrested. There is no doubt that the Detroit riots were the culmination of seething hostility between the police and the black community, and the response of the police to the disorder was brutal and disturbing. Almost all of the fatalities were black Americans, shot by the police or National Guards. The youngest victim, Tonya Blanding, was only four. She was shot through a window in her apartment when her uncle lit a cigarette. Even as the riot wound down three unarmed teenagers were shot dead by police in their hotel room - an incident made famous by John Hersey's book The Algiers Hotel Incident. The police were no doubt trigger happy and nervous, claiming they were being sniped on so had to respond. There was certainly a lot of shooting from both sides: some 2,500 rifles and 40 handguns were stolen from local stores. In one famous incident star baseball player Willie Horton drove into the riot and stood on the roof of his car in his Tigers' uniform pleading for clam. He was ignored, and the Motor City burned.
Watts, 1965
On August 11, 1965, at just after 7pm, police officer Lee Minkus pulled over a driver he believed to be drunk. It should have been a routine caution. The driver, Marquette Frye failed to pass a sobriety test - in those days touching your nose with the tip of a finger - and was duly arrested. From here things turned sour. The police refused to allow Marquette's brother Ronald to drive the car home, instead insisting on sending it to the pound. By 7.30 Ronald and his mother had also been arrested as the argument about the car became more and more heated. A crowd of dozens grew to hundreds who began throwing rocks at the police. As the mob grew and began looting and setting fires LA police Chief William Parker did nothing to calm the situation by likening the crowds to "monkeys in the zoo." The rioting grew in intensity over five days and the National Guard were called in to help the exhausted and overwhelmed police force: at one point nearly 14,000 National Guard prowled the streets of Watts and other flashpoints. The rallying cry of Burn Baby Burn came from KGFJ disc jockey Magnificent Montague, and for five days the city did burn: by the time the riot subsided, 34 people had been killed, 1,032 injured, and 3,952 arrested. It would stand as the worst riot in Los Angeles history until eclipsed by the Los Angeles riots of 1992.
Gujarat, 2002
Violence between Hindus and Muslims in the Indian State of Gujarat is nothing new, but events in February and May 2002 took the level of brutality to a new, vicious level. The violence began when an armed mob of 500 Muslims men attacked a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. Shockingly, beyond simply attacking the Hindus, the Muslim mob set fire to the train and burned 53 men, women and children alive. This was, naturally, the flashpoint for the riots that followed. Between February 27th and March 3rd violence raged in nearly 1,000 villages and hundreds of towns. Disturbances died down for a few days in early March, but after mid-March continued until the end of June. And the rioting was savage: in Naroda, 65 Muslims were killed and many women sexually assaulted by mobs. Esan Jahfri, and ex-MP was burned to death with fifty fellow villagers. According to an official estimate, 1044 people were killed in the violence - 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus including those killed in the Godhra train fire. Another 223 people were reported missing, 2,548 injured, 919 women widowed and 606 children orphaned. Unofficial estimates put the death toll closer to 2000, with Muslims forming a high proportion of those killed.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921
What started with an innocent stumble ended as the worst race riots in American history. Dick Rowland, a young, black shoeshine boy on the town's Main Street, popped into the Drexel Building, as he had dozens of times before, to use the 'coloured' bathroom on the top floor. As he entered the lift he tripped, and fell into the white elevator operator Sarah Page. Page screamed in surprise at the sudden contact, and Rowland, in a panic, fled the building. He was witnessed running away, and news quickly spread that he had assaulted Page - a serious and often fatal accusation in Oklahoma in 1921. Rowland was eventually arrested and a lynch mob tried to storm the Tulsa courthouse, only to be pushed back by the police department. This precipitated a riot that claimed the lives of hundreds of people. The rioting got so bad that the opposing sides of blacks and whites, many of whom were WWI veterans, began forming battle lines and digging trenches, waging a makeshift war against each other. The whites grossly outnumbered the blacks, and at one point, incredibly, small planes of assailants flew over the black neighbourhood of Greenwood shooting guns and dropping firebombs on the people below. It was claimed that 39 people died in the rioting. This is generally thought to be well short of the real figure, which is put at well over 300
Hippodrome at Constantinople
It has to be said that when it came to the old ultra-violence the Romans didn't fuck about. Festivals and spectacles grew in size and importance in the 5th century, and loyalty was divided between two factions: the Blues and the Greens. Chariot racing in particular was massively popular and its spectators took team affiliation far more seriously than even the most rabid football supporter does today. Three days before the riots began several members of both the Blues and the Greens had been arrested after a disturbance, and were sentenced to hang. Two of them escaped and sought sanctuary in a church, which was then placed under armed guard. On January 13th, 532, the chariot races began under a heavy cloud of anger. The crowd chanted for mercy to be shown to their two comrades throughout the races. Justinian, the Emperor, made no acknowledgment, and the mood of the crowd soured. With chants of nika (conquer) the crowd stormed the Praetorium and set fire to it. The mob set other fires, eventually burning down the Hippodrome itself. Days of rioting and burning ensued, and even a crack troop of Goths could not stop them. Finally, two of the Emperor's best generals, Belisarius and Mundus, trapped the mob inside the ravaged Hippodrome: "In the end not one of the citizens, either of the Greens or of the Blues, who were in the Hippodrome, survived" (Theopanes). Of the populace that day more than thirty thousand perished.
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