Riot Review: The Bradford 12 and Britain's Ugly Racist Past

Documentary makers Ken Fero and Tariq Mehmood recall the fight against racism in 1980s Britain, even if its account of solidarity contains a notable omission. Charged for possessing dozens of Molotov cocktails: milk bottles filled with petrol, with a rag stuffed in them.

His gritty film by socialist filmmakers Ken Farrow and Tariq Mahmoud gives us the story and context of Bradford 12. Twelve South Asian members of the Black Youth League were arrested in 1981 on charges of plotting to cause an explosion. Much to the anger of the British authorities, a mixed jury acquitted the police and accepted their argument of self-defense (and that the items themselves were closer to fireworks than bombs), as black and Asian communities were routinely and systematically attacked by skinheads and racists whose activities were ignored by the authorities.

It is reminiscent of a particularly ugly, poor, bigoted and mediocre era in British public life, when Margaret Thatcher, just before she became prime minister, tried to sap some of the political energy of the far-right National Front by declaring that people felt "inundated" by immigrants. It was also the time when anti-racism protester Blair Peach was killed by the still-undisbanded Met special forces, when the still-unsolved New Cross fire in London claimed 13 young black lives, when South Asian woman Enver Datta faced a spiteful restraining order from the British Home Office to prevent her children from being brought to the UK, ostensibly because they weren't really hers, although a DNA test eventually proved her right. Perhaps most of all, it was an era when the testimony of uniformed police officers in the witness box was increasingly seen as almost worthless in these cases. The film also reminds us how incompetent and incompetent the Yorkshire police were in apprehending serial killer Peter Sutcliffe.

Rebellion wants to give us a bigger picture of libertarian politics, citing Frantz Fanon and bringing in Palestinian, South African, African American and Northern Irish voices. But here, I have a criticism: given the declared importance of solidarity, it's a shame that none of the interviewees can find the word "anti-Semitism" in their hearts - especially since the film uses a lot of footage from the National Front, which had very open views about and regularly attacked Jews. Racism was clearly something that was in the air at the time along with misogyny and contempt for working people. Maybe people hide it better these days, but it's still shocking to remember the heavy air of bigotry in those days and to remember those who stood up to it in court.

Riot was screened at the London Film Festival.