Angry Eruption in Notting Hill

The annual two-day carnival in Notting Hill has become something of an end-of-summer rite for thousands of Londoners who flock to the racially mixed area to hear West Indian steel bands and dance to calypsos through the narrow old streets. Last year, however, there were also some 800 complaints of theft, so Scotland Yard decided to send in 1,600 bobbies, five times as many as in 1975. To many revelers, the huge police presence, complete with helicopter chuffing overhead, was an irritation. But many police, too, seemed irritated at having to spend their holidays in crowd control, and they began officiously ordering people around. So when a scuffle broke out between police and a suspected pickpocket, fighting quickly spread. Young blacks bom barded the police with rocks, bottles and beer cans. The police seized garbage-can lids for protection, then counterattacked with nightsticks. When it was over, some 400 were injured--325 of them police. It was the worst such conflict in nearly two decades.

Britain now has some 1.8 million nonwhites--a heterogeneous collection of West Indians, Indo-Pakistanis and Africans--crowded into urban ghettos and suffering an unemployment rate three times the white rate. The morning after the Notting Hill riot, most observers agreed that it was not so much a battle between blacks and whites as between tough black youths and white police. But the Times added: "It is a warning of further troubles to come if the right lessons are not drawn now."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.