Coming of Age : 1976 and the Road to Anti-Racism

victim of a crime or any witnesses to confirm that the arrested person, who nine times out
of ten was black, was acting in a suspicious or criminal manner.
This meant that in court it was the officers word against the word of young black kids.
The black kids stood no chance, we knew this and of course the police knew it too.
And, because the magistrates always believed the police, they used it only too well. The
stats are available for all to see they used the sus laws to criminalise young black kids in
much the same way that they use Joint Enterprise laws (also common law) to prosecute and
persecute predominantly Black youths nowadays.
SUS is often cited as similar to Stop and Search but the use of the SUS laws was much
more pernicious and harmful than stop and search is; as it was an indictable offence that led
to tens of thousands of young black youths receiving criminal records and custodial sentences.
Well many of those who had been arrested under the SUS laws during the heatwave of
76 were also attending the carnival that year.
We were all disappointed at the large numbers of police officers that we found there.
This was meant to be our carnival. The ONE day of the year that we hoped we would be
free to enjoy ourselves instead we were being shepherded into the narrow passages beneath
the flyover by aggressive burly and very surly police officers with their rolled up shirt
sleeves and black gloved hands which were surly unnecessary in the middle of a heatwave
but provided us with a clear indication of what was to come
Rumours were spreading throughout the day that SPG officers, Special Patrol Group,
were apparently being held in reserve, and were sitting in their vans showing off their NF
badges to the crowds of carnival goers as they passed by them. The SPG were infamous in
our community as the police force’s ‘storm troopers’ they had earned a reputation amongst
us as hard bastards who should be avoided at all costs.
Looking back I guess it had the makings of the classic storm. In that there were hundreds
of thousands of mainly black youths, who simply wanted to enjoy the one-day of the year
that they felt was ‘their/our day’.
Amongst them would have also been a number of youths who had been charged and
imprisoned for a crime that they had not committed, SUS, and many would have been awaiting
their day in court. This would have been a day in which they would have just wanted to
forget the everyday pressures, of growing up Black in a white mans world, and truly ‘let off’
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