The Notting Hill race riots were a series of racially-motivated riots that took place in London, England over several nights in late August and early September 1958.
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The end of World War II had seen a marked increase in Caribbean migrants to Britain. By the 1950s, white working-class "Teddy Boys" were beginning to display hostility towards the black families in the area, a situation exploited and inflamed by groups such as Sir Oswald Mosley's Union Movement and other far-right groups such as the White Defense League, who urged disaffected white residents to "Keep Britain White".[1]
There was an increase in violent attacks on black people through summer. For instance, 24 August, a group of ten white youths committed a series of serious assaults on six West Indian men in four separate incidents. At 5.40am, their car was spotted by two police officers who pursued them into the White City estate, where the gang abandoned the car. Using the car as a lead, investigating detectives arrested nine of the gang the next day after working non-stop for 20 hours.[2]
Just prior to the Notting Hill riots, there was racial unrest in Nottingham, which began on Saturday, 23 August and went on intermittently for two weeks.[3]
The riot is thought to have started on Friday 29 August when a gang of white youths attacked a Swedish woman, Majbritt Morrison.[4] The youths had seen her the previous night arguing with her Jamaican husband Raymond at Latimer Road tube station. They had shouted racial insults at him and were incensed when she turned on them.[5] Seeing her the next night, the same youths pelted her with bottles, stones and wood and struck her in the back with an iron bar, until the police intervened and she was escorted home. Morrison later wrote an autobiographical book, Jungle West 11, which included details of her ordeal.
Later that night a mob of 300 to 400 white people, many of them "Teddy Boys", were seen on Bramley Road attacking the houses of West Indian residents.
The disturbances, rioting and attacks continued every night until they petered out by 5 September.
The Metropolitan Police arrested over 140 people during the two weeks of the disturbances, mostly white youths but also many black people found carrying weapons. A report to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner stated that of the 108 people charged with crimes such as grievous bodily harm, affray and riot and possessing offensive weapons, 72 were white and 36 were black.[6]
The sentencing of the nine white youths arrested during the riots has passed into judicial lore as an example of "exemplary sentencing" – a harsh punishment to act as a deterrent to others. Each of the youths received five years in prison and they were to also pay £500.[7]
The Notting Hill Carnival was started by Claudia Jones in January 1959 as a response to the riots and the state of race relations in Britain at the time.
The riots caused tension between the Metropolitan Police and the British African-Caribbean community, which claimed that the police had not taken their reports of racial attacks seriously. In 2002, files were released that revealed that senior police officers at the time had assured the Home Secretary, Rab Butler, that there was little or no racial motivation behind the disturbance, despite testimony from individual police officers to the contrary.[6]
Another, entirely unrelated, riot occurred many years later in 1976 at the conclusion of the Notting Hill Carnival after police arrested a pickpocket and a mixed group of both black and white youths came to his defence. The disturbance escalated and over 100 police officers were injured. Two notable participants in this riot were Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon, who later formed the London punk band The Clash. Their song "White Riot" was inspired by their participation in this event.
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