More like this
Broadwater Farm: another era in policing - or was it?
Robert Chesshyre: When PC Blakelock died, the police on London estates acted like ‘an army of occupation’
The murder in 1985 of community police officer Trevor Blakelock on the Broadwater Farm, Tottenham, north London, was not quite so far back in the mists of half-remembered time as the TV series Life on Mars, but the news that a man (then a boy) has been arrested and bailed on suspicion of the killing stirs memories of what most police-watchers would say today was another era. Or was it?
In 1985 Britain was on the racial edge. Four years earlier, riots had erupted in Brixton, south London, and other large cities; relations between police and Afro-Caribbean communities were hostile to the point of urban warfare; and, although among blacks and the inner city poor the police were known to fabricate evidence with the help of time-dishonoured interrogation techniques, the broader public were still (just) prepared to accept a policeman's word in court.
PC Blakelock, by all accounts the sort of decent officer that all communities want patrolling their streets, was horribly hacked to death with machetes and stabbed with knives. He was trying to protect firemen fighting blazes that raged across a notorious estate that had become a virtual no go area. The cause of that day's violence was the death by heart attack of Cynthia Jarrett, a middle-aged black woman who collapsed when police searched her Broadwater flat for allegedly stolen goods.
The 'Farm' was a tinder-box of suppressed anger at the way it and other such hard-pressed estates were then policed by a force that seemed in the words of a senior police officer I knew like 'an army of occupation'.
What officers said went; day-in and day-out young blacks, especially those with spirit about them, were on the harsh receiving end. Detection was much like Life on Mars days, and 'rounding up the usual suspects' was a kneejerk first move in any inquiry.
Amongst the 'suspects' rounded up after PC Blakelock's killing was a large young black man named Winston Silcott, who was instantly demonised both by police and media, then almost solid in their support for the 'boys in blue'.
Silcott looked the part (especially in police photos): bushy black hair and beard, staring eyes. He was the bogey man of Middle England nightmares, and despite a dodgy case against him and other accused he was convicted of Blakelock's murder. "Job done," said the satisfied cops.
Except it wasn't. The convictions of Silcott and his fellow accused were thrown out on appeal in 1991. Surprise, surprise, the latest forensic techniques revealed that pages in police notebooks bearing 'incriminating' statements by Silcott had been inserted at a later date.
No murder is ever officially closed, but some are pursued more vigorously than others, and none more vigorously than the murder of a police officer.
From time to time since, there have been 'significant' developments in the case, culminating with the arrest in Suffolk last Friday of a 40-year-old man, now bailed until May.
It is no longer the era of Life on Mars, and one can be fairly confident that, after the Stephen Lawrence murder and the subsequent Macpherson report that decided that the Metropolitan Police (the London force and by far Britain's largest) was 'institutionally racist', this inquiry will be conducted by the book.
But the case of Met Commander Ali Dizaei, convicted this week of abusing his office, assaulting and trying to 'fit up' a man to whom he owed money, reminds us that society must still be on the alert for gross police malpractice.
The judge branded Dizaei a 'criminal in uniform': it was a term I first heard used on an estate not unlike Broadwater Farm shortly after the sad, still unsolved killing of PC Blakelock. ·
Comments are now closed on this article
Comments
My best friend lived just outside the entrance of Broadwater Farm in the 70s-mid 80s. That part of Mount Pleasant Road was a nightmare - cars broken into & my friend's motorbike vandalised frequently. I once made the mistake of briefly venturing onto the Farm on his bike - the place was full of visibly angry young men (black & white) just standing on overhead walkways glaring at everybody else. Neither we nor anyone else terrorised by the residents were policemen. So maybe the Police/Jarrett raid struck the spark - but there was a lot of aggression around the place beforehand.
Many thanks Mr Jose. The problems of today are caused by peer pressure, lack of self and general respect of others and above all no discipline. Many youth of today now grow up from a family that fails before it starts because there is no love from two parents and no direction of life made known. For those youths it's a rotten stinking system that allows the single parent to thrive on benefit payments and free housing supported by successive, non caring governments.
Of course some one parent families are very successful, but the younger the parent, the less likely that will be.
In the 70s things were a lot different as you observe. Many young black lads became upset at constantly being stopped. Those with values suffered it as did the more intelligent. For the less intelligent there was the exploitation of extremist parties who stirred and needled until something went pop. The rest is history.
Wow. Mr Beaumont, good summation. There are some real experts loose on this site. I always blamed a large part of the social hate and strife on the multiculturalism that was introduced by the politicians of envy back in the 1970s. I was brought up in a church based in Wolverhampton that (uniquely as far as I know) was 50% white (including some Poles and Italians), and 50% Afro-Caribbean. We did not have to pretend that cultures were equal one day, then at some point we did. No one but a lunatic or charlatan really believes it to this day. After all, how many cultures are desperate to get here to improve their lot, and how many would we like to decamp to? Then of course Enoch Powell stood up like a hero and said what would happen, was vilified like a criminal, then he was proved right, and he is still being vilified like a criminal - by the lunatic socialists and rose-tinted spectacle brigade.
Apologies! Should be 'Criminal Attempts Act 1981.'
Mea Culpa
The reason the riots started was not because of a glut of 'fit ups' as you suggest.
All this happened pre PACE days; the Police nationally were guided by the 'Judges' Rules. Stop and Search was supposedly being used in an out of proportionate manner against the black communities; the statute was S4 Vagrancy Act 1824 [Sus Law] which was originally intended as a tool to deal with vagrant, unemployed soldiers returning from the Napoleonic Wars.
It is worth remembering too, that pre-PACE only the Met Police had a specific power to stop and search. Such stops were then recorded on a stop slip - stops never resented - and in the station copied into the Book 90 in black ink, unless an arrest occured and then it was in red ink.
Following riots in Brixton the Scarman Report cited the use of the 'Sus' Law as instrumental in sparking off these riots.
The unfortunate death of Miss Jarrett did little to help the relationship of Police and Community on Broadwater Farm Estate and was the catalyst for certain persons to take to the streets and engage Police in the same manner as done in Brixton and Bristol previously.
Note that whilst these riots were in full swing lorries were being loaded with goods looted from local shops. The riots were not just about community relations.
Trevor Blakelock was not 'hacked to death' as you state but was felled by a single blow to the head by the murder weapon.
The era of 'Life on Mars' ended with the loss of the Judges' Rules in favour of the PACE Act 1984.
Even then some sections of the black community rankled against that because they suddenly realised that the replacement for the Sus Law, the Criminal Attempts Act 1985 made the Sus Law look like a damp squib. The Sus Law was dropped on the recommendations of Lord Scarman.
Moving forward in time it can be seen that Mr Dizaei has done nothing different that a number of policemen might have done in the days of the Judges' Rules.
Operation Countryman stands silent sentry to that; where Mr Dizaei went wrong was that he forgot that we no longer have the Judges' Rules' and that his 'activities' would perhaps be expected of someone lower in rank.
But his case is nothing out of the ordinary if you consider the outcome of Operation Countryman: one Commander at least was named, a Det Sgt went spying for the Russians and a DC blew his brains out. Not only was poor police practice blamed but also Freemasonry [always a handy drum to beat to stir the public up] and a culture in the police that no longer exists today.
One particular factor that stands out is that pre-PACE many police officers had done their National Service. In their early twenties they joined the police having had such experiences as service life, some of it overseas and under duress, could give them. Discipline and team work was ingrained and they would stand no 'lip' from those who did not wish to be compliant.
Compare that with a police entrant today.