Explosion Time

It came from a blue sky, or at least from a sky that was thought to be clear: but perhaps some people were not being very observant. Handsworth is a dingy Birmingham suburb that has seen better days. The inhabitants are West Indian immigrants, 50 per cent of them unemployed; hardworking Asian shopkeepers, who came from India and Pakistan or fled from Uganda; and working-class whites who are stranded in what has become a foreign community.

Such a district is bound to be volatile, but the municipal authorities and the police were rather pleased with themselves. Their scheme of “community policing” was considered a model of its kind. Twenty-five million pounds of the taxpayers’ money had been provided for development and renovation. Admittedly the crime figures were high, and drugs, openly sold on the streets, were a growing problem. The blacks complained of police harassment; the Asians complained that the police were not protecting them adequately or tackling the drug menace. But there had been no serious confrontation for a long while—not since the inner-city riots of 1981, and even then Handsworth was not among the worst hit.

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Anthony Lejeune

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It came from a blue sky, or at least from a sky that was thought to be clear: but perhaps some people were not being very observant. Handsworth is a dingy Birmingham suburb that has seen better days. The inhabitants are West Indian immigrants, 50 per cent of them unemployed; hardworking Asian shopkeepers, who came from India and Pakistan or fled from Uganda; and working-class whites who are stranded in what has become a foreign community.

Such a district is bound to be volatile, but the municipal authorities and the police were rather pleased with themselves. Their scheme of “community policing” was considered a model of its kind. Twenty-five million pounds of the taxpayers’ money had been provided for development and renovation. Admittedly the crime figures were high, and drugs, openly sold on the streets, were a growing problem. The blacks complained of police harassment; the Asians complained that the police were not protecting them adequately or tackling the drug menace. But there had been no serious confrontation for a long while—not since the inner-city riots of 1981, and even then Handsworth was not among the worst hit.