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‘A nigger in the new England’: ‘Sus’, the Brixton riot, and citizenship

In April 1981, Black youth in the South London neighborhood of Brixton participated in a two-day riot that resulted in numerous injuries and widespread property damage in an already economically depressed area. Immediately after the event, many politicians, including new Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, labeled the ‘disorder’ as wanton lawlessness; a framing that has, in many circles, scholarly and popular persisted. However, activists at the time attempted to locate the Brixton riot within a history of institutional racism endemic to all levels of English society. This paper situates the Brixton riot within the context of Section IV of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, which shaped the lives of Black youth in the 1970s and early 1980s, and demonstrates the level to which Black people were historically marginalized in English society in the post-World War II period.