Who still remembers the riots which swept through English towns in August? At the time Keir Starmer described them as far right thuggery. Law and order was quickly restored. No more was said and Westminster confined them to the past. And then two weeks ago on 29 October, Axel Rudakunaba, accused of the murder of the three small girls in Southport on 29 July which precipitated the riots, was charged with possessing terrorist material and producing ricin.
In contrast to today’s political amnesia, the Conservative Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw ordered an inquiry under Lord Scarman into the 1981 Brixton riots. The rioters were mostly young and black, and had been subjected to intolerable levels of police racism.
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