In the late 1940s and 1950s the first wave of Afro-Caribbean immigrants, many of them ex-servicemen who fought, bled, and watched their friends die during WW2 for the UK, landed with their families in London. During that first winter bricks were thrown into their windows (often in bags containing shit), their homes were attacked, and there were regular assaults on their children. When the situation got really bad, they tore up bed sheets to use as bandages, used kitchen knives and broken furniture as weapons, to defend their homes and loves ones. But when these loyal colonial subjects fought back they became the primary criminals in the eyes of the police: regularly mistreated, unjustly punished, and even framed for crimes they did not commit. This is the kind of injustice and abuse faced by black people in England ever since, all the way to today’s discrimination and structural economic inequality.

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