When the underbelly roars

When the first riots hit Brixton, I was 12 years old. My mates and I came from south London council estates and, while we were no angels, we certainly couldn’t be described as bad kids.

I can’t pretend that I had any real grasp on why people were rioting but I knew it was against the same police who would stop and bug us constantly — even though none of us had either the balls or inclination to commit crime.

It may sound like a tired cliche but the police didn’t feel like our protectors. They felt like more like an occupying force. And why? There were countless incidents to explain it, but one that sticks in my mind was in 1981 — the same year as the first Brixton riots. Riding my bike on Oxford St, I was passed by a police van and every single officer made monkey noises at me as they went by.