On 17 January 1981, Yvonne Ruddock was enjoying her 16th birthday party at her family home on New Cross Road in south-east London. As the party ran on into the early hours, a fire broke out. Yvonne and 12 other guests, all aged between 14 and 22 years old, were killed, and another attendee died two years later. All 14 victims were black.
BBC Radio 4’s Lights Out marks the upcoming 40th anniversary of the fire with this crucial episode (27 October, 9pm), blending interviews with survivors, archive clips and original poems from Mark “Mr T” Thompson. I urge you to listen to it on BBC Sounds. The show explores the extreme racism the West Indian diaspora was subjected to by the state (we hear police officers say all black people look alike, and Margaret Thatcher claim Brits felt “rather swamped” by a “different culture”) and white locals who complained of “black noise”, leading many to think the fire was a racist arson attack.
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