‘I spent four months in prison. I was a very angry young individual’

Author Alex Wheatle MBE, 57, took part in the Brixton riots nearly 40 years ago. Here, he tells how discovering a love of books in jail turned his life around

Author Alex Wheatle MBE remembers taking part in the Brixton riots

The Brixton riots really began a few miles away in New Cross. It was there, in January 1981, that 13 young black people died in a house fire, thought to have been an arson attack. Britain was in a recession, youth unemployment among the Afrocaribbean community was at more than 60 per cent and race relations were worsening. As police ‘stop and search’ shot up, the constant sense of us versus them was palpable on the streets.

It would reach boiling point on Friday 10 April. A young black man was spotted running down the road in Brixton, blood pouring from him. The rumour was that the police had stabbed him. I was 18, unemployed and living in a hostel at the time. I joined the crowds pouring out into central Brixton the next morning. Everyone was tense, wondering what was going to happen. Around lunchtime, the police arrested a minicab driver, roughing him up in front of us. From there, it really escalated. The police called for backup and a van arrived, which rioters quickly surrounded and turned on its side. All hell broke loose.

The police were using dustbin lids as makeshift shields, trying to protect themselves from the missiles and Molotov cocktails being thrown at them. There were screams and sirens coming from every direction; the street was a carpet of broken glass, petrol, burning cars and bricks. When I looked up everything was orange. The high street was being looted, leaving the police not knowing where to turn. They began to give chase, so we ran and then I hid, dimly aware of the destruction around me, including almost 300 police and 60 civilians injured, dozens of premises razed to the ground and more than 100 vehicles destroyed. Eventually I went back to the hostel. Others had brought back the fruits of their looting: new clothes, cigarettes, liquor. The police arrived a few weeks later to arrest me, and I was sent to HMP Wormwood Scrubs for assaulting a police officer, criminal damage and resisting arrest.

In a strange way, those four months in prison turned my life around. I had been brought up in children’s homes having been taken into care, and was a very angry young individual. When I was locked up, I began reading. A cellmate gave me The Black Jacobins by the Trinidadian historian CLR James, an eyeopening account of the Haitian revolution – the first and only successful slave revolution in human history – and I devoured it. It inspired me to start writing and to vent how I was feeling on a page. I didn’t want to waste my life, no matter how bad the odds against me were.

When I left prison, I started writing poetry and lyrics, then novels. I was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2008. I’m married now with three children; I’ve written 13 books (five for young adults) and I teach creative writing in prisons.

Things have changed so much since 1981, partly due to the public inquiry brought in the aftermath of the riots, which found unquestionable evidence of the police’s disproportionate use of stop and search against black people. It’s happened slowly, but I believe we’re in a much better place now. Through writing, I make sure voices like mine are heard.

— Interview by Charlotte Lytton

Police on the streets of Brixton, south London, April 1981