1981

WORLD EVENTS

JANUARY: New Cross House Fire. 13 black teenagers die. ‘Thirteen dead and nothing said.

MARCH: IRA second hunger strike. Inmate Bobby Sands is elected as an MP.

New Cross Action Committee organise “Black People’s Day of Action”.  20,000 march from Fordham Park to Hyde Park, London. Budget raises taxes and cuts spending. Exacerbates unemployment in recession.

APRIL: Murders of Satnam Singh Gill in Coventry 18 April and Malcolm Chambers On 10 April in Swindon in an ‘anti-black riot’. Three day riot in Brixton, after heavy handed policing in ‘Operation Swamp’.

APR/MAY: TUC March for Jobs Liverpool – London.

MAY: Labour take control of the Greater London Council (GLC) under leader Ken Livingstone. Bobby Sands dies after 66 days hungerstrike. Riots in Northern Ireland. 100,000 attend his funeral. Seven more hungerstrikers die before strike ends on 20 August. Bob Marley dies of cancer.

JULY: Riots in 35 towns and neighbourhoods across the country, including Toxteth, Liverpool; Chapeltown, Leeds; Handsworth, Birmingham; Moss Side, Manchester; Southall and Hackney in London. Royal wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer, marking an end to riots.

First cases of mysterious and fatal disease attacking the immune system of healthy young men reported in the United States. In 1982 the syndrome was given the name AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. The virus causing AIDS was identified in 1984, officially named HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) in 1986.

JULY/AUG: The ‘SUS’ law is repealed.

SEPTEMBER: Greenham Common women’s peace camp established after a mainly women’s march to US Air Force base to protest arrival of 96 US Cruise nuclear missiles. The camp lasts for 19 years.

OCTOBER: Scarman Report (on UK riots) published. British Nationality Act becomes law, redefining and restricting British citizenship.

 

RAR REGIONS & WORLD

JULY/AUG: Leeds RAR Carnival: Misty, Specials, Au Pairs, Aswad, Joolz The Poet.

 

RARzine TEMPORARY HOARDING (TH)

JULY/AUG 81: TH 14:

RAR Leeds Carnival;

Specials interview;

Soweto sunrise;

Royal Wedding & Riots montage;

Whitelaw fucking wally poster.

 

CULTURAL & TECH

JANUARY: MTV opens. First pop videos.

MARCH: Moira Stuart becomes ‘Britain’s first black woman news presenter’. Enoch Powell speech warns of ‘racial civil war’.

APRIL: The Au Pairs album: Playing with a Different Sex.

JULY: The Specials: Ghost Town, released 13 June, UK No. 1 from 11-25 July; “single of the year” according to all the music press. Spare Rib Don’t do it Di! Badge.