Black In Britain B References

BRIXTON SW9. This south London town has developed into what is thought to be the spiritual home of Black Britain. It became home to many of Britain's Windrush generation who were decamped to the nearby Clapham upon arrival. The town, which is the capital of the London Borough of Lambeth, became synonymous with Black Britain after civil disturbances in the early 80s - The Brixton Riot.

BRIXTON RIOT. A flammable alcohol heavy cocktail served in bars in and around Lambeth town. Thought to have been conceived at the bar formerly known as The Brixtonian.

BRIXTON RIOT - 1981. It's thought the violent arrest of a black man led to hundreds of people taking to the streets of Brixton hurling petrol bombs at police, burning cars and looting shops in what was one of the largest civil disturbances in modern times. Some 400 people including 50 police officers were injured. Rioting was centred around the Railton Road and Atlantic Road areas of central Brixton - known at the time as the 'frontline'. Rioting lasted three days. Police using a discriminatory tactic of stopping under suspicion, SUS or 'Stop and Search' as it was commonly known, is thought to have been behind the riot and many others that followed throughout inner city Britain. Young Black people felt they were being unfairly targeted by a heavy-handed unchecked police force. The spring of 1981 had seen the launch of Operation Swamp aimed at combating street crime. Police stopped and questioned people at random in and around the borough, but it proved to be the last straw as Brixton erupted. Riots also erupted in Toxteth, Liverpool and Southall, west London.

BRIXTON RIOT - 1985. Days of civil unrest brought about by the police shooting of innocent mother Cherry Groce. Her gunman son Michael, wanted by London's Metropolitan Police, was thought to have been hiding out at his mother's home. Word of her motiveless shooting which resulted in her being paralysed from the waist down, spread along Brixton's then 'frontline' Railton Road, the upshot of which saw several days of running battles with the police, looting and burning. One person died, some 50 people injured and police made over 200 arrests. Riots also erupted that year on Tottenham's Broadwater Farm housing estate, north London.

BRIXTON BOMBER - brought London to its knees. 1999 angry white boy brings London to its knees. Neo-Nazi nail bomber David Copeland killed three people in a series of attacks in Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho. He will stay in prison for at least 50 years, a high court judge ruled in 2007. He was originally sentenced to a minimum of 30 years for the bomb attacks in London in April 1999 and injured 139 people.

Jak Bubeula-Dodd, once described as a jack of all trades, is an entrepreneur? It appears that he's done everything, if not most things. Although he achieved notoriety creating the popular 'edu-tainment' board game Nubian Jak, Bubeula-Dodd, true to the jack of all trades tag, has been a model, singer-songwriter-producer (working with among others Jazzy B, George Michael, Seal, Stigma, The Skatelites, Musical Youth, The Might Sparrow and Motorhead), author and social-worker. In 1993 he became the face for Interflora and featured in an international advertising campaign. As a writer, he's written two factual books, a novel, and worked with The Voice newspaper. He also featured in the Channel 4 series Superhuman. He is currently with the Mayor of London on a pioneering new scheme to get heritage plaques commemorative of past historical BME figures.

Dr Robert Beckford - academic, Birmingham University. Also writer/producer/presenter of a number of controversial television and radio documentaries

Bernie Grant - the late Bernie Grant. Former Haringey councillor and Labour MP for Tottenham north London.

Michael Butscher - is a former West Africa magazine and Voice newspaper journalist. Last heard of reporting from the civil war in his homeland Sierra Leone. Any news of his whereabouts, please e-mail: editorial@BlackInBritain.co.uk

Toni-Ann Byfield (d) - Seven-year-old girl shot dead whilst in the care of a

drug-dealer thought at the time to have been her father. Joel Smith was sentenced to life imprisonment for shooting Bertram Byfield, 42 and then killing Toni-Ann in a bid to cover up the crime. Smith robbed crack houses, sometimes at the point of a gun and had planned to do the same to Byfield. On September 2003 Smith, tricked their way into the ground floor bedsit on Harrow Road, London to kill Byfield, a Jamaican. Toni-Ann, was murdered with a single shot.

Black Britain - 90s Black newspaper started as an alternative to the Voice newspaper. Edited by Joseph Harker now at the Guardian.