Category: Police violence
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Southall 1979 pamphlet
Today is the anniversary of the police riot in Southall on 23 April, 1979 when police attempted to break up a demonstration against the National Front outside Southall Town Hall. There were numerous injuries and over 300 arrests, while one protestor, Blair Peach, was killed. Recently declassified files reveal much more about what happened at…
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Will history absolve the Bristol protestors?
This was originally posted over at my Patreon here On Sunday night, a protest against the Tories’ Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which would have put severe limitations on the right to protest in England and Wales, turned into a violent confrontation with the police. As night fell, the police used force to push…
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15 June, 1974 – ‘No Platform’ and Red Lion Square
15 June, 1974 saw both an emergency conference held by the National Union of Students on the issue of ‘no platform’ and a counter-demonstration against the National Front in Red Lion Square. The two incidents were a pivotal moment for the emergent anti-fascist movement in Britain. Below is based on a passage from my forthcoming manuscript on…
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The history of racial violence in Britain: A short reading list
I saw this tweet during the week: Fifteen years ago, I taught a course on collective racial violence in the US. It is the only course I decided to never teach again. #Thread — Walter D. Greason (@WorldProfessor) August 13, 2017 And then tweeted this: Reading this & thinking about what would you include in…
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Orgreave is not merely history, but an important historical incident that needs to be fully investigated
To Guardian journalist Simon Jenkins, just over thirty years ago is too far into the past for an inquiry into the events at Orgreave in June 1984, when the police reacted violently to striking workers in South Yorkshire and led to the arrest of 95 miners, as well as a number of people injured. Jenkins argues…
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New edited book on 2011 UK riots: ‘Reading the Riot Act’
In 2013, the Journal for Cultural Research published a special issue dedicated to the UK riots of 2011, edited by Rupa Huq. This featured an article by myself on looking at the 2011 riots through the lens of 1981. Routledge has now published this special issue as an edited collection, available here in hardback. Alongside…
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New article in Journal of Australian Studies: Policing Protest in the Australian Capital Territory
Just a quick post to let you all know that the latest issue of Journal of Australian Studies features my long awaited article on policing protest in the ACT in the early 1970s. The full title of the paper is ‘Policing Protest in the Australian Capital Territory: The Introduction and Use of the Public Order…
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New archival documents reveal potential dangers of Thatcher’s advisers on policing and community relations issues
The latest round of government papers from the Thatcher era have been released by the National Archives, this time relating to documents from 1986 to 1988. Amongst the papers that have been released is a Prime Minister’s Office file (PREM 19/1783) relating to the 1985 riots in Handsworth and Tottenham, continuing on from these files…
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Appeal for primary source material on British/Irish left & female hunger strikers at Armagh 1980
Recently the Irish Times has started running a series of articles on the history of the 1980-81 hunger strikes in the lead up to a symposium being held on the subject in London in June 2016. One of the articles by Maria Power discussed the hunger strike undertaken by three republican women in Armagh Prison…
New Historical Express 