1980 St Pauls riot

Riots in Bristol, England St Paul's riot list of civil unrest in Minneapolis–Saint Paul September 2013 October 2020 1980 St Pauls riot St-pauls-riot.jpg A line of police in the foreground facing some demonstrators/rioters in the middle distance in a city street. Police facing rioters in City Road, St Pauls. Police, local residents Bristol, England 1980 4 2 y 25 injured, 130 arrested, no convictionsThe St Pauls riot occurred in St Pauls, Bristol, England on 2 April 1980 when police raided the Black and White Café on Grosvenor Road in the heart of the area. After several hours of disturbance in which fire engines and police cars were damaged, 130 people were arrested, 25 were taken to hospital, including 19 police and members of the press. The riot occurred against a background of increasing racial tension, poor housing and alienation of black youth. As a result of the disturbances local authorities and the national government began to pay attention to these issues. The Black and White Café was closed in 2004 and eventually demolished. Background Bristol in the 1970s had seen an increase in unemployment and a deterioration of race relations as the right-wing National Front party campaigned in local and national elections. St Pauls was blighted by the development of the M32 motorway, which split the area from the neighbouring district of Easton. Much of the housing in the area was in a poor state and local education services failed to cater adequately for the needs of either ethnic minorities or indeed many working class white communities.Dresser Madge Fleming, Peter Bristol: Ethnic Minorities and the City 1000–2001 Phillimore and Company Chichester 2007 Victoria County History 146–149 978-1-86077-477-5 Dresser, 2007 St Pauls as a locality was around 35% non-White in 1981,Ball Roger Violent Urban Disturbance in England - 1980-81 https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/index.php/preview/943132/Master%20Document%204%201_electronic_copyright.pdf live https://web.archive.org/web/20251031192201/https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/index.php/preview/943132/Master%20Document%204%201_electronic_copyright.pdf 2025-10-31 much of this population Afro-Caribbean. Increasing use by the police of Sus laws to stop and search youths, predominantly those from the Afro-Caribbean community, raised tension. There was also an increase in racial harassment on local council housing estates, which was largely ignored by the housing department. Riot It is unclear why the riot started; some sources suggest that it was as a result of police ripping a customer's trousers and refusing to pay,http://members.lycos.co.uk/brisray/bristol/briot.htm St. Paul's Riot: 1980 Bristol Riots 1 June 2006 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20080120015226/http://members.lycos.co.uk/brisray/bristol/briot.htm 20 January 2008 Beware: site has pop-up ads. others that they were attacked as they removed alcohol from the café which did not have a drinks licence. According to The Guardian newspaper, 100–200 black and white youths were involved.http://www.warwick.ac.uk/CRER/differentreality/ra01_1.html St. Paul's, Bristol 1980 and the LA Riots University of Warwick 21 April 2009 John Rex dead https://web.archive.org/web/20110605190418/http://www.warwick.ac.uk/CRER/differentreality/ra01_1.html 5 June 2011 However other sources estimate the size of the crowd at about 2000.http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/st-pauls-riots-37-years-17634 The St Paul's Riots 37 years on Churchill Laura Bristol Post 3 April 2017 The riot continued for many hours and caused much damage to a branch of Lloyds Bank and a post office.Reicher S. D. The St. Pauls' riot: an explanation of the limits of crowd action in terms of a social identity mode European Journal of Social Psychology 1983 14 1–21 http://www.bbcprisonstudy.org/includes/site/files/files/1984%20EJSP%20St%20Pauls.pdf 10.1002/ejsp.2420140102 Several fire engines and 12 police cars were also damaged. At one point a police chief famously remarked: "Surely we should be advancing, not retreating?" 130 people were arrested and 90 were charged. The next day, The Daily Telegraph carried a headline stating "19 Police Hurt in Black Riot" and blamed lack of parental care.http://crookedtimber.org/2005/04/02/25-years-since-the-st-pauls-riots/ 25 years since the St Pauls riots Chris Bertram Crooked Timber 2 April 2005 1 June 2006 Aftermath Nineteen policemen and six other people were taken to hospital, including a cameraman and a photographer from the Western Daily Press. 16 of those arrested were prosecuted for riot, but all were either acquitted, had the charges dropped or were discharged after the jury failed to reach a verdict.http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/U/untold/programs/riot/timeline.html Untold – Black History Season channel4.com 21 April 2009 Copycat riots in Southmead, a predominantly white working-class council estate, occurred soon after the St Pauls disturbance.Serpico John http://www.brh.org.uk/articles/southmead.html The Southmead Riots Bristol Radical History Group 27 October 2011Ball Roger http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/17958/19/Master%20Document%204%201_electronic_copyright.pdf ‘The Bristol Riot and its Other': St. Paul's and Southmead in April 1980 University of West of England 15 August 2018 Later commentators suggested that poverty and the sus laws were more important causes of the riots than race. The House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee held a session in Bristol and Home Secretary William Whitelaw came to the city to hold meetings with the local authorities and representatives of the black community.Dresser, 2007, pp. 149–151. Relations between police and the local community remained tense and reached a low point in 1986 when 600 police raided the Black and White Café again in an action named Operation Delivery. It took intervention by local Member of Parliament William Waldegrave to persuade the police to scale down their policy of containment. The Black and White Café had long had a reputation as a drug den and was allegedly raided more times by the police than any other premises in the country.https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/feb/09/drugsandalcohol.tonythompson Britain's most dangerous hard drug den The Observer 9 February 2003 London Tony Thompson In 2003 Bristol City Council used its powers of compulsory purchase and in 2005 the building was demolishedEnd of the road for 'drugs' cafe https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/4344769.stm BBC News Online 13 March 2005 7 January 2009 and has now been replaced by new homes.https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/3146491.stm BBC News Online 13 August 2003 Riot cafe to be demolishedhttps://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/4614702.stm BBC News Online 16 January 2006 Homes replace former 'drugs' cafe When cabinet papers were released 30 years later, they showed that Home Secretary William Whitelaw had reported that the Chief Constable "accepted that the police had made errors in the initial stages of the incident but [his] subsequent decision to withdraw all officers from the area for several hours had been the only one open to him at the time". Whitelaw said that a full public inquiry was undesirable as it would only lead to the police being criticised for no good purpose, and that not every controversial matter should lead to such an inquiry.https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/dec/30/national-archives-1980-margaret-thatcher National Archives 1980: Margaret Thatcher and her handbag diplomacy Alan Travis and Owen Bowcott The Guardian 30 December 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20110123163551/http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/30/national-archives-1980-margaret-thatcher 23 January 2011 live See also Urban riots References 30em External links Portcities with images of the riots https://web.archive.org/web/20070927062333/http://www.discoveringbristol.org.uk/results.php?s=&categoryId%5B%5D=8&p=9 27 September 2007 Documentary by Borja Cantera, narrated by local poet Miles Chambers 51.4645 -2.5824 type:event_region:GB title St Pauls Riot, 1980 St Pauls Riot, 1980 Category:Black British history Category:Crime in Bristol Category:Race riots in England Category:St Pauls, Bristol St Pauls Riot St Pauls Riot St Pauls Riot