Читать книгу Bodies, Affects, Politics - Steve Pile - Страница 9

In 1972, work began constructing the Lancaster West Estate in North Kensington, London. The Estate was intended to redevelop part of the Notting Hill area, which had become notorious for its slums, poverty and criminality. This reputation has, for decades, been racialised. Since the HMT Empire Windrush first docked (in 1948), the neighbourhood’s cheap rooms for rent had proved attractive to new immigrants from the Caribbean (see Phillips and Phillips 2009). Notting Hill also attracted ruthless slum landlords, such as (most infamously) Peter Rachman. By the 1950s, local white people, especially working‐class Teddy Boys, were starting to display hostility towards black people moving into the area. In the summer of 1958, there were increasing attacks on black people as well as the rise of right‐wing groups, such as the White Defence League; its slogan, ‘Keep Britain White’. On Sunday 24 August 1958, armed with iron bars, table legs, crank handles, knives and an air pistol, a gang of white young men bundled into a battered car and drove around Notting Hill for three hours on what they called – in a ghastly echo of lynching culture in the South of the United States – a ‘nigger hunt’ (‘The Nigger Hunters’, Time Magazine, 29 September 1958, p. 27). They attacked six Caribbean men in four separate incidents: nine of the gang were arrested the following day in the nearby White City estate, after their car was spotted by police. (Later, in September 1958, to their shock, they were each sentenced to four years in prison by Mr Justice Cyril Salmon.)

The following Friday, 29 August 1958, Majbritt Morrison, a white Swedish woman (who would later author Jungle West 11 about her experiences) was arguing with her Jamaican husband, Raymond Morrison, outside Latimer Road tube station (which is situated on the western edge of the Lancaster West Estate). A crowd of white people gathered to protect a white woman from a black man (see Dawson 2007, pp. 27–29), despite Majbritt herself not needing nor wanting to be defended. A scuffle broke out amongst the gathering crowd, Raymond and some of Raymond’s Caribbean friends. On Saturday 30 August, a gang of white youths spotted Majbritt leaving a dance, recognising her from the evening before they started hurling racist abuse – and milk bottles. Someone hit Majbritt in the back with an iron bar. Yet, she stood her ground and fought back, but, when she refused to leave the scene, the police arrested her. The situation quickly escalated. Soon, a 200‐strong mob of young white men was rampaging through the streets of north Notting Hill (half a mile or so to the east of the tube station), armed with knives and sticks, shouting ‘down with niggers’ and ‘we’ll murder the bastards’ (reported in The Independent, 29 August 2008 and The Guardian, 24 August 2002, respectively). The mob attacked police with a shower of bottles and bricks. This led to five nights of constant rioting (until 5 September), fuelled by the arrival of thousands of white people from outside the area, and by the retaliation of the local Jamaican population, which eventually armed themselves with machetes, meat cleavers and Molotov cocktails.

Ironically, these events were described at the time as the Notting Hill Colour (or Racial) Riots, implying that these riots were the fault of, and conducted by, black people – when, in fact, black people were the target of white riots. Indeed, it was only the Jamaican fight back that brought the riots to an end, with the police singularly failing to control the situation. Afterwards, the Metropolitan Police refused to acknowledge white racism as a cause of the rioting, despite the testimony of officers on the ground to the contrary. Of the 140 arrested during the riots, 108 were charged with offences, with 9 white youths eventually being sentenced: each was given the ‘exemplary’ punishment of 5 years prison along with a £500 fine. One response to the riots was the creation of a Caribbean Carnival, first held indoors on 30 January 1959, by Claudia Jones – a Trinidadian activist, who had been deported from the United States in 1955, having famously written about the subordination and struggle of Negro women from a Communist perspective (Jones 1949; see Boyce‐Davis 2008). The Caribbean Carnival was an important precursor to the now world‐famous Notting Hill street carnival, itself policed as if it were a riot in 1976 and 1977.

Partly as a consequence of the so‐called ‘Colour Riots’, the 1960s saw the north Kensington area embody a reputation for poor housing, drug use, prostitution and violence. Of course, this is characteristically an unfolding story of class and racial inequality, with factions of the white working class remaining antagonistically opposed to the developing Caribbean community, yet with new working‐ and under‐ class solidarities being formed across racial lines, through cultures associated with sex, drugs and music. This reputation was consolidated in novels, such as Colin MacInnes’ Absolute Beginners (1959), which is set against the background of the riots, where race and racism are unavoidable. The area’s evident social inequalities and antagonisms also attracted filmmakers.

In 1970, in advance of the imminent destruction of the original street layout by the development of the Lancaster West Estate, John Boorman filmed Leo the Last on a set built on Testerton Road. The film dramatically dealt with issues of class and race conflict. In the film, Leo, an exiled prince from a foreign country, becomes a Marxist after he witnesses the exploitation of his poor black neighbours by rich white landlords. Rallying his neighbours together, Leo stages an uprising, quickly overcoming the intellectual classes (in the form of a doctor and lawyer). However, the capitalist class (in the form of rent collectors, shopkeepers and shareholders) proves harder to defeat. Leo retreats to his house. Eventually, Leo is forced to flee, burning down his house (repeatedly) in the process – an uncanny portent of the tragedy to come. Within a couple of years, Testerton Road (along with much of the surrounding area) would be demolished by the wrecking ball of slum clearance and redevelopment. Following Boorman, we might think the wrecking ball represents the inevitable victory of capitalism over the working class, with the antagonisms of race and class flattened by the bulldozer.

Although the Lancaster West Estate redevelopment required the displacement of about 3000 people, few were against the plan to replace the crumbling Victorian housing stock. The original plan was a grand design, involving the creation of a modern housing estate with workplaces, shops, offices and amenities, with improved access to the Latimer Road tube station. The master plan was drawn by Peter Deakins, who had been involved in the first stages of designing the Barbican Centre. Though the grand plan would never be fully realised, building went ahead. The initial phase, starting in 1970, would construct three ‘finger blocks’ (three‐ and four‐storey housing blocks) and a tower block to the north of the site. The finger blocks had large, enclosed, open spaces with children’s play areas. One finger block, Testerton Walk, replaced the former Testerton Road. The finger blocks were seen as tower blocks laid on their side, with internal walkways to keep the housing as compact as possible and a central covered walkway to provide access. To the north, the finger blocks were anchored by a single tower block, designed by Nigel Whitbread applying principles derived from Le Corbusier and the modernists. Building of the tower block began in 1972 and was completed two years later. The first four of the 24 floor tower contained commercial and administrative units; on the remaining 20 floors, there were 120 one‐ and two‐bedroom units, six dwellings on each floor, to house about 600 people. This building would be named Grenfell Tower (as it stood on Grenfell Road).