March against police brutality in Harlesden, 3 July. Rosie Toussint (centre) was one of those beaten up by police on the black youth of Harlesden.
The sham attempts of the police force to recruit black officers should also be exposed. Far from the recent recruitment drive being a well-publicised failure, in many ways it was a public relations coup for the police.
BIGOTED It is difficult to think that the police chiefs were not delighted to have received weeks of publicity in the national media, showing the police force as an earnest anti-racist body, desperate to integrate blacks. Their opponents were played up to be 'militant, racist black agitators and misleaders.' And all for the bargain price of £40,000.
The real side of police relations with the black community are not the gushings of Sir Robert Mark or 'Q' Division's Chief SuperintendOR his sentence deferred. A packed public gallery watched the month-old Chapeltown Bonfire Night trial in Leeds reach its conclusion last week. On Friday cheers greeted the not guilty verdicts on Glenville Sheriffe (18), David Cohen (21), Eurie Maurice (17), and Maxim Farrar, a 26-year-old lecturer. Even Keith Gumbs, a 16-year-old school boy found guilty of criminal damage, had Expectancy of a great victory was in the air on Saturday when verdicts on the remaining defendants were announced. But all but one of the black youth were found guilty, and now two young teen- arace agers - Clyde Sheriffe and Claude Hender son - face two years in borstal, while Henry Grey got three months in a detention centre. Anthony Pyke and Ernest Fleming, who had been pressured into pleading guilty by their mothers, found no mercy: Pyke got three months detentSonate tree monis Do swaneer ing 9 months to two years borstal. Fri day's euphoria had been quickly crushed But why was there any trial in the first place? Street bonfires on 5 November are a long tradition in the Chapeltown area - and so is police harassment of the mainly black youth who attend them In 1974 some police cars were damaged and three firemen were injured when they tried to stop the fire by turning noses on me youn Last year things went further, Trouble was expected, but arter a pouce-Haisor meeting with local community and race relations workers, une ponce seemed to have agreed to keep out of the area. Yet early in the evening police cars were spotted in nearby streets and one or two even drove through the 200-strong crowd that had gathered in Spencer Then came a motorway-style patrol car - which got hit by a missile. Then another police car, then a CID car which was forced to stop under a hail of bricks - then a convoy of two dog patrol cars, a motorway car. and two or thre pandas all led by a personnel carrier. Finally (!) the police arrived in force with dogs, truncheons and patrol cars to chase the youth off the streets. The youth fought back with what they could.
The police succeeded in arresting only one person on Bonfire Night - the onotowaoner or me loca commumt newspaper Chapeltown News. Eleven