"London's Burning" (the political epithet, not the UK TV show)

Usage
"London's Burning" was a political and media epithet relating to the inner London's near social anarchy from the mid 1970's to the mid 1980s. It is not related to the UK's TV show about London's firefighters. Left wingers, ethnic minorities, squatters, gays, hippies, druggies, the TUC, anti-Vietnam War protests, bent cops, crooks, communist agitators, bizzar "Loony Left" councilors, dictatorial Conservative councilors and Neo-nazi rioters all got involved in the crisis at various times.

Racism and Anti-Sematisum in the East End
Also see: Racial conflict in London (1959-1982).

Anti-sematisum, sino-phobia and Polonophobia were common place since late Victorian times. Some of the then Jack the Ripper theories were wholly Anti-Semitic in nature and Sir Oswald Mosley's fascist Black Shirts held sway parts of in the East End from the mid 1930s to the early 1950s.

The 'Windrush Boys' arrive
Also see: Racial conflict in London (1959-1982).

The British Nationality Act 1948 gave British citizenship to all people living in Commonwealth countries, and full rights of entry and settlement in Britain. Many West Indians were attracted by better prospects in what was often referred to as the mother country, which was short of manpower due to the heavy losses incurred in World War 2. Northampton and Reading welcomed them, but London and Nottingham hated them. The traditional Labour voting parts of the East End basically hated any one, who weren't native Londoner/East End Whites. Sir Oswald Mosley had once held much support in parts of it due to his Anti-Semitic views.

In 1958, attacks in the London area of Notting Hill by white youths marred relations with West Indian residents, leading to the creation of the annual Notting Hill Carnival, which was initiated in 1959 as a positive response by the Caribbean community. The continue to celebrate their cultural heritage at the festival to the resent day.

The Kray twins
Twin brothers Ronald "Ronnie" Kray (24 October 1933 – 17 March 1995) and Reginald "Reggie" Kray (24 October 1933 – 1 October 2000) were English gangsters who were the foremost perpetrators of organised crimes including armed robberies, arson, protection rackets, assaults, intimidation and the murders in London's East End of during the 1950s and 1960s. They were non-political and, as far as I know non-raciest, gangsters, but they helped destabilise London all the same and vote chasing politicians even exploited the Kray's criminal acts for there electoral gain.

The 1954 Newspaper Dispute
The walk out disrupted the news papers, including fleet Street in London.

The 1955 Rail Strike
The walk out disrupted the railways, including those in London. Apparently one of the unions was more militant than the other and fell out with the TUC, who are the trades union's collective national organising comity. A communist plot may have been behind the strike.

East End declines
Limehouse Basin was amongst the first docks to close in the late 1960s. later the docks also closed at Whapping and The Isle of Dogs. Other places like Whitechapple and Brick Lane were also in decline for other socio-economic reasons. By 1981, Limehouse had shared the London Docklands-wide physical, social and economic decline which led to the setting up of the London Docklands Development Corporation in these regions. Other places like Whitechapple, Shadwell, the Isle of Dogs, Wapping and the Greenwich Peninsular have been revitalised since the late 1970s.

The Docklands Light Railway (DLR) is an automated light metro system opened in 1987 to serve the redeveloped Docklands area of London and has grown vastly ever since.

CND marches
CND organised the Aldermaston March which went from the Atomic Weapons Establishment near Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square in London every Easter weekend Between 1959 and 1965. Many Labour MPs and councilors, alonf with a few Conservatives and Liberals, supported CND's ideals and joined in their rallies and maches.

The Special Patrol Group
The Metropolitan Police's Special Patrol Group (SPG) was a often violent special police squad analogues to the other forces' more law abiding Special/Flying Squad and was active from 1961 to 12 January 1987, then being replaced by  the Territorial Support Group. The SPG was accused of racism and abuse of the UK's sus laws.

The offical equerry and police disciplinary inquiry after the death of Blair Peach found variety of unauthorised weapons were either used by and/or found in the possession of SPG officers, including baseball bats, crowbars and sledgehammers.

The 17th of March, 1968, Anti-Vietnam London protests
A 10,000 held a rally in Trafalgar Square in London and later 8,000 mainly youthful protesters marched on Grosvenor Square, where Vanessa Redgrave delivered a letter of protest to the American embassy.

The crowd, though, refused to disperse, and a fierce battle ensued between demonstrators and riot police. Protesters hurled mud, stones, firecrackers and smoke bombs; mounted police responded with charges.

The violence of the struggle, in the heart of Mayfair, shocked everyone. By the end of the afternoon, more than 200 people had been arrested, a police horse injered and 21 people from both sides also injured during the event.

Their was rumour amongst the protesters that US Marines guarding the embassy were hiding behind the doors, armed with machine guns filled with live ammunition, and under a licence to kill. Some protesters also felt sorry for the police horses as they threw ball-bearings under their hooves.

Other such rallies had also occurred at about the same period of time in Tokyo, Paris, Prague, Chicago, Mexico City, but not all of them were violent.

The National Rail Strike of June 24th, 1968
The walk out disrupted the railways, including those in London.

The 1969 miners strike
Unofficial strike by mineworkers over pay of surface workers caused chaos as coal supplies ran low.

The Bangladeshis arrive
Also see: Racial conflict in London (1959-1982).

They fist came over as a result of the 1969-1972 Bangladeshi was of independence against Pakistan. 5 March 1971 saw a demonstration in front Pakistan High Commission in London with a flag burning and memorandum handover to high commissioner for liberation. Similar anti-Pakistan events occurred at this time in both Birmingham and other parts of London, such as Spitalfields. They were later encouraged to move to Britain on mass due to changes in immigration UK laws, natural disasters such as the Bhola cyclone, the aftermath of the Bangladesh Liberation War against Pakistan, to escape poverty and on the Sylhet region's perception of a better living led Sylheti men bringing their families in the UK.

A mixed White/Asian/Black demonstration against the National Front took place in Brick Lane, during the June of 1978.

1970 Southall peace and unity march
Also see: Racial conflict in London (1959-1982).

A 25-30 strong Afro-Caribbean and Asian rally occurred near Ealing Broadway station in first week of May.

Clerkenwell squatter's camp
A disused tenement building in Clerkenwell Road was taken over by hippy squatters and daubed with graffiti in 17 August 1971. They tried to promote anarchist-leftism, liberal-leftism, dope, peace, anti-capitalism, multi-culturalisum and personal freedom. Left-wingers had be active in the district since at leas 1933 and there were quite a few pro-Soviet eliments and inderviduals in the district.

Early 1970s and early 1980`s Football Hooligan Riots
London matches were also devastated on a daily basis by this UK wide phenomena.

1974 Tube strike
It was a partly effective 1 day tube strike in the May of 1974 which was meant to back up the NUM's long running strike outside London. The 2 miners' strikes were in 1972 and 1974.

The British government imposed a 3-day working week in early 1974 for commercial and industrial users of electricity after industrial action by miners caused most power stations to run out of coal. Steel, dock, power station, automotive, electrical, BBC, ITV, bus and rail workers also struck at times across the nation to. Many dockers were jailed in both strikes for treason, but were soon released after the strike was over, since they did break strike and trades union activity laws in several cases, but were not traitors or in league with a hostile outside power and/or organised crime as some claimed at the time.

Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE)
Paedophile Action for Liberation had developed as a breakaway group from South London Gay Liberation Front. The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) pedophile advocacy was founded in October 1974 and officially discriminated and disbanded in 1984. Vague media and purported eye witness accusations that it was in league with the 'Loony Left', if not the London branch of the Labour Party as a whole continue to this day.

The 'steaming' of the Nottinghill Canaveral
Also see: Racial conflict in London (1959-1982).

The 1959 event, held indoors and televised by the BBC, was organised by Trinidadian Claudia Jones

Emslie Horniman's Pleasance (in the nearby Ladbroke Grove area, with Westbourne Park its closest tube station), has been the carnival's traditional starting point.

There was major trouble in 1976 and 1975 with pickpockets in the crowd and police's heavy-handed approach against the large congregation of blacks and it became "no-man's land". The 1,600 strong police force violently broke up the 1976 carnival, resulting in the arrest of 60 people. The mostly white police then understandably bullied, got paranoid about, lied about and racial smeared it for many years. A change of policy came after a confrontation with mostly Jamaican 'Steamers' (crowds off professional muggers, mugging entire clouds of spectators on mass) in 1987. There were a few other muggings, lesser steaming in later years.

The Brick Lane anti-National Front demonstration of June 1978
Also see: Racial conflict in London (1959-1982).

A mixed White/Asian/Black demonstration against the National Front took place in Brick Lane, during the June of 1978.

The 'Winter of Discontent' in London
The phrase "Winter of Discontent" refers to the British winter of 1978-1979, when widespread strikes marked the largest stoppage of labour since the 1926 General Strike, as the working classes and the Trade Unions rebelled against the hapless Labour Party government of James Callaghan, due to the declining economically. Most of the strikes were  over by the February of 1979, but the Conservatives fed on it and proto-spin-doctored there way to victory in the 1979 general election and then inevitably passed legislation to restrict unions.

Public sector employee strike actions included an unofficial strike by gravediggers working in Liverpool and Tameside, and strikes by refuse collectors. Additionally, NHS ancillary workers formed picket lines to blockade hospital entrances with the result that many hospitals were reduced to taking emergency patients only.

The U.K.'s dustmen (a.k.a. garbage collectors) went on strike trough out most of the strike and caused much chaos in the nation. Feb. 1, 1979, during a strike by dustmen in the London borough of Westminster; Leicester Square, Soho, and a 3/4 mile backlog of rotting garage in London’s Finsbury Park became notoriuse across the Western World. LUL and the buses went on strike at times as well.

The death of Blair Peach
Also see: Racial conflict in London (1959-1982).

lair Peach was an active member of the East London Teachers' Association, a branch of the National Union of Teachers, and became its president in the last year of his life. He was also allegedly a member of the Socialist Workers' Party at the time of his death.

He was a campaigner and activist against far right and neo-Nazi organisations and a member of Anti-Nazi League.

Soho's illegal sex industry
Between 1965 and 1982, the number of sex shops had over doubled from 31 to 65 and had disturbed the local populous with their activities by the late 1970s. In 1982 Porter became Chairman of the General Purposes Committee and set to work in alleviating the issue.

The Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 stipulated that Westminster Borough Council could shut down any pornographer that did not hold a license. The licencing rules were thus set as 20 sex shops, run by staff and managers who had both a minimum of 6 months residency in the UK, run by staff and managers who had a clean police record, to keep a register of their staff and to conceal their practice with blinds. Only 13 shops remained in Soho by the Febuary of 1983.

The porn shops and squatters in Clerkenwell incident
In the late 1970s and early 1980s several suattre camps/illegal porn shops ran there covert trade in and around Ashmount Road, Hornsey Rise until the Police's SPG unit violently raided them and arrested/beat up the people behind them.

The 1980 Britsh Movement's London rallies
Also see: Racial conflict in London (1959-1982).

They held a roudy rally that ran from Paddington and Marble Arch. London, 1980. there were scuffles with police and some arrests. A couple also occered at a similar time in the East End.

Nicky Crane,Crane was jailed in 1981 for his part in an ambush on black youths at Woolwich Arsenal station. An old bailey judge described Nicky Crane as "worse than an animal" after his part in the May 1978 bus stop attack that involved assault on a unsuspecting black family in Bishopsgate.

The 1981 Brixton riot
Also see: Racial conflict in London (1959-1982).

The death of PC Kieth Blakelock
Also see: Racial conflict in London (1959-1982).

PC Blakelock was the first constable to be killed in a riot in Britain since 1833, when PC Robert Culley was stabbed to death in Clerkenwell, London.

The Wapping dispute


The 1986-1987 Wapping print workers' dispute was, along with the miners' strike of 1984-5, a significant turning point in the history of the trade union movement and of UK industrial relations.

Power mad bosss and lazy print workers fell out over new working practices, new technolagy and staff cuts. This lead to a strike and picket of the News International pringing presses at Wapping.

The Manxman and the Soho gay/porn cinema incident
In the early 1980s a morally conservatively minded bloke from the Isle of Man was jailed for chucking a petrol bomb in to a then well known and popular illegal night time gay/porn cinema in a Soho basement, leading to a 5 deaths and several injures as a result of the fire and the subsequent struggle to escape the burning room.

Nuclear-free zones
By the late 1980s, Grater Manchester, Greater London, The London Borough Hounslow and the 'Loony Left' London boroughs in London; along with a few other rural counties (of which a few wer Liberal and Conservative run) and boughs had declared them selves nuclear zones.

The 'Loony Left'
See: London's political 'Loony Left'

Dame Shirley Porter
The Conservatives were narrowly re-elected to Westminster City Council in the 1986 local council elections, with their majority reduced from 26 to just a majority of 4. The Conservatives in total only held onto control of the council by 106 votes after Labour failed to gain the marginal Cavendish Ward which was needed to give Labour the majority to take control of the council.

Now fearing that they would eventually lose control unless there was a permanent change in the social composition of the borough, Dame Shirly Porter instituted a secret policy known as 'Building Stable Communities'. The most marginal in the City Council elections of 1986. Bayswater, Maida Vale and Millbank, had been narrowly won by Labour, whilst St. James's, Victoria and Cavendish had been narrowly lost by them, in West End ward an Independent had split the two seats with the Conservatives while in Hamilton Terrace the Conservatives were threatened by the SDP.

As a result every thing from who could get a council house to what streets were cleaned became politically skewed to promoting, rewarding and creating more Conservative held wards. This fatally subverted democracy between 1986 and 1990. He antics helped prove to many that the Conservatives were as anti-democratic as labour, thus rasing the Liberal and SDP vote in Greater London as a whole.

End game at the The London Poll Tax Riot
The London Poll Tax Riot was a protests-come-riot against the poll tax (officially known as the "Community Charge"), that occurred on Saturday, 31 March 1990, shortly before the tax was due to come into force in England and Wales. m.

Life today


There have been LUL and bus strikes since, and a mixture of anti-capitalists, ecologists, Reclaim the Streets, anti-Iraq war protesters, El Majaroon (a pro-Taliband lot), the Countryside Alliance and ethnic minorities have rallied, marched, protested and rioted since, but is has never been as constant or bad as in the 1970s and 1980s.

Limehouse Basin was amongst the first docks to close in the late 1960s. later the docks also closed at Whapping and The Isle of Dogs. Other places like Whitechapple and Brick Lane were also in decline for other socio-economic reasons. By 1981, Limehouse had shared the London Docklands-wide physical, social and economic decline which led to the setting up of the London Docklands Development Corporation in these regions. Other places like Whitechapple, Shadwell, the Isle of Dogs, Wapping and the Greenwich Peninsular have been revitalised since the late 1970s.

The Docklands Light Railway (DLR) is an automated light metro system opened in 1987 to serve the redeveloped Docklands area of London and has grown vastly ever since.

In 2002, the Countryside Alliance organised the Liberty & Livelihood March, then the largest ever demonstration in British history, with almost half a million people marching through London to demonstrate against the proposed ban on fox hunting with hounds.

Also see

 * 1) The Paris riots of the 1960s
 * 2) Italy's Years of Lead
 * 3) CND
 * 4) RAF Molesworth
 * 5) RAF Upper Heyford
 * 6) Greenham Air Base
 * 7) London's political 'Loony Left'
 * 8) Racial conflict in London (1959-1982)

Links

 * 1) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Poll_Tax_Riots
 * 2) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kray_twins
 * 3) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Special_Patrol_Group
 * 4) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Death_of_Blair_Peach
 * 5) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Notting_Hill_Carnival
 * 6) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Clerkenwell
 * 7) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/British_African-Caribbean_people
 * 8) http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/image_galleries/london_thru_lens_gallery.shtml?14
 * 9) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/British_Movement
 * 10) http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/HU007879/british-movement-march-through-london
 * 11) http://bussongs.com/songs/baa-baa-white-sheep.php
 * 12) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Black_sheep
 * 13) http://bussongs.com/songs/baa-baa-black-sheep.php
 * 14) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Baa,_Baa,_Black_Sheep
 * 15) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Paedophile_Information_Exchange
 * 16) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Loony_left
 * 17) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loony_left
 * 18) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sus_law
 * 19) http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/labour-vs-militant-tendency.html
 * 20) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Knight_(politician)
 * 21) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-rise-and-fall-of-red-teds-loony-lefties-1593657.html
 * 22) http://bussongs.com/songs/baa-baa-white-sheep.php
 * 23) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/may/21/1968theyearofrevolt.antiwar
 * 24) http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/march/17/newsid_4090000/4090886.stm
 * 25) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Death_of_Blair_Peach
 * 26) http://www.magnumphotos.com/Catalogue/David-Hurn/1968/GB-London-Anti-Vietnam-War-Riots-1968-NN162836.html
 * 27) https://uk.news.yahoo.com/on-this-day--thousands-of-anti-vietnam-protesters-clash-with-police-in-london-161217942.html
 * 28) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway
 * 29) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Wapping_dispute
 * 30) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Shirley_Porter
 * 31) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nuclear-free_zone
 * 32) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Homes_for_votes_scandal
 * 33) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Shirley_Porter
 * 34) http://www.conservapedia.com/Winter_of_Discontent
 * 35) http://www.businessinsider.com/thatcher-and-the-winter-of-discontent-2013-4#ixzz3iAINpK00
 * 36) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Winter_of_Discontent
 * 37) http://www.businessinsider.com/thatcher-and-the-winter-of-discontent-2013-4?IR=T
 * 38) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hunting_Act_2004
 * 39) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Poll_Tax_Riots
 * 40) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Countryside_Alliance
 * 41) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/may/21/1968theyearofrevolt.antiwar
 * 42) http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/march/17/newsid_4090000/4090886.stm
 * 43) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Death_of_Blair_Peach
 * 44) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Limehouse
 * 45) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/History_of_Bangladeshis_in_the_United_Kingdom
 * 46) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6729683.stm
 * 47) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Brick_Lane
 * 48) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6729683.stm
 * 49) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Edward_Heath
 * 50) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/10794806/Tube-strike-London-Underground-live.html