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CHAPTER 1
HYMN OF HATE

THE FIRST TIME IS OFTEN THE WORST. You never forget that feeling. Never quite forget how you responded or how you wish you’d responded. You hate yourself. Hate yourself for the way you felt. And that hate, hatred of the incident, hatred of your response to the incident, it never leaves you. Always stays, always scars. It never leaves you because every time an incident like it happens again, whether explicit or implicit, your immediate emotion harks back to that first feeling, back to that first response. Fright. Fight. Distrust. Disgust. You may know how to respond differently now, how to be more assertive, maybe more passive. But fundamentally, at that moment when you are confronted by racism, you dive right back to that first feeling, to that first response. Fight. Fright. Disgust. Distrust.

My first time occurred at Wembley Arena on 27 September 1980. I was seven. Wasn’t there in person. Observed it on TV. On screen, the Arena resembled a backstreet pub in the East End: smoky, uninviting, hostile and undeniably white and working class. You didn’t need to see the faces of the patrons in attendance to grasp their attitudes. Their fanatical moans painted a picture of flushed-faced, testosterone-charged, agitated men. The Arena may have been playing host to the world middleweight championship fight between Alan Minter and Marvin Hagler, but on this night, the world-famous venue had been transformed into a scowling theatre of hate.

I watched the fight with my father in our comfy living room in Second Avenue in Manor Park. We were one of maybe seven black families on the street, which was in the north side of Newham, one of the most racially mixed parts of the East End. My father was a painter and decorator while my mother had just started working for Laker Airways. I lived in the three-bedroom terrace with my two older sisters and my grandmother, who had her own bedroom and kitchen in the extension. I planted myself chest down on our rug in my usual posture, elbows grinding into the rug to support my head, which was perched on my hands. My father took his place behind me on our sofa, with its black synthetic armrests and orange seat covers, which sat in front of our lantern-patterned wallpaper, coloured three shades of brown.

I didn’t know Minter or Hagler at the time. However, I remember my father putting down his newspaper to concentrate on the fight, which signified its importance. It wasn’t too often that our 19-inch colour television commanded my father’s full attention. He had purchased it with my mother’s premium bonds winnings in 1970, just in time for the World Cup in Mexico, the first finals to be televised in colour. Ever since, it had become the most vocal member of our family. It was always on, whether anyone was watching it or not. It drowned out the noise of cars speeding down our street, the screeches of kids playing knock down ginger and the metal on metal bangs from our neighbours working on their cars. My father controlled the TV, always claiming to be watching something even if he was asleep or reading the Sun. I was his personal remote control.

On screen, the fighters were standing in opposite corners in the ring. Minter, a white boxer from Crawley in West Sussex was the reigning world middleweight champion, having wrestled the title from Italian-American Vito Antuofermo in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas in March 1980. Minter’s victory had been controversial. Most of the boxing writers sitting ringside thought Antuofermo won the fight. An informal poll of ringside writers had 10 siding with the Italian-American, five with Minter with two scoring it even. Two of the three judges on the night were split in their scoring between Minter and Antuofermo. However, the third judge, Roland Dakin from England, gave Minter 13 rounds to just one to Antuofermo with one round even, causing Boston Globe writer Bud Collins to remark: ‘He [Dakin] wasn’t the usual burglar, stealing in the comfort of the home precinct. He had gone into another man’s country to perform the overwhelming act of larceny, and never tiptoed.’

So, Minter had to defend his title against Antuofermo in June. The return, at Wembley Arena, was not controversial. Minter dominated, slicing Antuofermo’s face to pieces and causing the referee to stop the fight in the Brit’s favour in round eight.

Minter had been the golden boy of British boxing. A 1972 Olympic bronze medalist, he looked like a young Clint Eastwood, with a hard face but pretty features and a constant expression as if the sun was shining directly in his eyes. Out of the ring he wore tight flashy suits with his shirts unbuttoned to reveal his chest and gold chains. Minter had a flat nose, a wide face with a natural tan and a bouncer’s confident posture. His victory over Antuofermo made him the most famous sports star in Britain, sought after for sponsorship deals and ads. American fight critics didn’t think much of him though. Not surprising. American fight critics didn’t think much of most British fighters. These writers tended to load their articles with lazy jibes about what British fighters did outside of the ring (primarily drinking tea) and insults about how they fought in the ring (stiff and upright). Minter certainly did not move with the fluidity of fighters like the American Sugar Ray Leonard or Mexico’s Salvador Sanchez. And his biggest problem through the seventies had been his susceptibility to cuts, the core reason behind most of his defeats. But he was a gutsy performer, relatively light on his feet, with a piercing jab.

His opponent Marvin Hagler was bald, black and expressionless. Brought up in Brockton, Massachusetts, Hagler had earned his title shot the hard way, fighting for little or no money against a series of the division’s toughest contenders, many of them from Philadelphia. He too had fought Antuofermo, in 1979, but failed to win the title after their contest had been declared a draw. Most boxing critics thought Hagler had won the fight. Hagler thought he’d won too. But Antuofermo’s camp had refused to grant a rematch, instead preferring a contest against Minter. The result left Hagler bitter, moody and even more menacing. He even claimed credit for Minter’s title victory stating, ‘Minter is only champion because he gained the benefit of the beating I gave to Antuofermo in Las Vegas.’¹ Hagler had an immovable presence on screen. Though his features were soft, his bald head, sharp cheekbones and steely glare gave him an intimidating look.

At Wembley the fighters bobbed and weaved in their corners as they readied themselves for the national anthems. The crowd heartily booed the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ while their slurred, groaning harmonies accompanied the British anthem. ‘Minter led the singing of the British anthem, which was bellowed out with such intensity by the capacity crowd that it was more a hymn of hate than an expression of pure patriotism,’ recalled Harry Mullan in Boxing News.

I didn’t understand the crowd’s hostility. Indeed, the anthems and the pageantry of boxing were all a blur to me, lost in the murky setting. Wembley Arena looked little more than a school gym. The spotlights were straining to shed light on the ring. Maybe it had been our television. Either way, I had no idea how big the arena was because it looked so dark, so congested. The entire crowd seemed as if it was within spitting distance of the ring.

As I watched Minter and Hagler in the ring that night, I knew who I wanted to win. So, when my father asked me to select my favourite, my response was instant and firm.

‘Minter.’

My father was taken aback. ‘Minter? Do you know what he said?’

‘What?’

‘He said a black man can’t beat a white man. Can you really support someone who says that about us?’

I had no way of checking if it was true or false. I had no response. As far as I was concerned, Minter was English, and being English myself, I wanted him to win.

Nineteen eighty had, so far, been a fantastic year for sport. In my mind, Minter–Hagler was not at this point living up to the other sporting events I had watched. It was the first year that sports stars rivalled Batman and Superman as the heroes we all wanted to be on the school playground.

It started in May when West Ham United, my local football team, won the FA Cup. Football in the late seventies and early eighties was not glamorous. The balls rarely moved, rarely bounced because the pitches were always so muddy. The players didn’t look like athletes: a combination of wild facial hair, unkempt Afros, mullets and perms, thick ‘porn’ ’taches, rolled-down socks and ill-fitting football kits made it unattractive.

Trevor Brooking, the Hammers’ stylish midfielder with the leathery face of a miner, had been one of the few players during that period to shine on those boggy pitches. Brooking scored the winning goal against Cup favourites Arsenal. He was already a hero to football fans in the East End. But when he scored that goal, he became a sporting idol to every East Ender.

After the FA Cup, I spent most of the summer watching sport. Not really by choice. My parents rarely let me out to play in the street. Didn’t know why, but I kind of knew. They never told me directly, but my sisters’ stories revealed that the environment I had been growing up in was violent.

Manor Park was bleak. People were nice. But Manor Park seemed to lack ambition. Most of the older kids I knew would leave school at 16, find work, get married and, if they had airs about them, move 20 minutes up the road to Ilford. Nothing wrong with that, but it didn’t feel as if much existed beyond Newham’s borders.

Manor Park suffered from the usual inner-city problems: kids carrying knives, frequent robberies, high unemployment, little or no green space, little for kids to do. But racism had been among the borough’s biggest problems. Felt it. Nothing direct. Heard the rumours. Saw the looks. Sensed the tension.

The National Front (NF), a violent, extremist, far-right movement, used to distribute racist leaflets outside my primary school (Avenue) and my two older sisters’ secondary school (Little Ilford). I had heard rumours about black families, not far from where I lived, who had petrol poured through their letterboxes and had their houses set alight. I overheard the story of some white youths who had dressed in Ku Klux Klan outfits and set alight either a four-foot cross or a black kid. Didn’t know which. The term ‘P*ki bashing’, which would involve skinheads beating up Asian people, had been a part of the daily vocabulary in primary school. Indian and Bengali kids were frequently beaten up by white youths on their way home from Little Ilford, our local secondary school. At my school, some white kids just wouldn’t befriend you. I could take the constant questioning, about the colour of my skin (‘were you burnt?’), about my heritage (‘where are you really from?’), about my name. But some kids would just flat out refuse to play with me (‘you must stick to your own’).

My reality was not so bad in comparison to other black and brown people in Newham. Blacks and Asians had been regularly terrorised throughout the borough. There had been unsolved racially motivated murders, school children violently beaten up inside the school gates (not just outside), arson, and frequent unjustified assaults and arrests by the police. You never knew the names of the victims. No one, it appeared, was ever caught. Didn’t seem to make the news. Only made the news if blacks and Asians fought back, which would then be reported more as a reason for moral panic than a right to protest.

Black and Asian families had also been historically discriminated against by Newham Council and other local services. They were systematically put to the back of the housing priority line. They faced problems at work, often enduring the worst conditions. They had to cope with an education administration that followed the Minister of Education’s policy that ‘no one school should have more than 30 per cent of immigrants’.² I didn’t know there had been a policy that problematised black and brown kids. I didn’t know that black and brown kids were regarded as a threat to cohesion. I didn’t know that schools were deliberately excluding black or brown pupils to keep numbers down or sending them to schools for the educationally subnormal. That’s what alternative provision for ‘troubled’ pupils was called back then. Always wondered what happened to some of my school mates. They didn’t do what was best for black pupils. We were treated as unwanted statistics.

I didn’t know about the Virk brothers, the Ramsey family, Akhtar Ali Baig, Kennith Singh, the Toussaint brothers.^* They were the victims or survivors with no names. The sources of rumours that were in fact a reality.

No freedom. That’s what it meant for me. My parents had clearly been aware of the challenges in Newham, so they essentially locked me in the house during the evenings and in the holidays.

During the summer of 1980, I watched England fail miserably at the European football championships in Italy. My only memories were of Ray Wilkins lobbing two defenders and then casually lifting the ball over the goalkeeper in England’s draw against Belgium and the tear gas used by police to restrain English football hooligans. Crowd violence would be the norm in English football through the eighties.

I saw my first live sports event that summer, when my father took me to Lord’s to watch the second Test between West Indies and England. West Indies’ opening batsman Desmond Haynes hit his highest Test score in that game with 184, while Viv Richards won man of the match for a typically destructive 145.

The Moscow Olympics followed, my abiding memories being Seb Coe’s sulky face after surprisingly losing the 800 metres final to Steve Ovett, Scottish sprinter Allan Wells running as if breaking down a door in a police raid to win the 100 metres gold and Ethiopian Miruts Yifter ‘The Shifter’, who looked about 50, winning the 5,000 and 10,000 metres double with finishing bursts that Mo Farah would have been proud of.

By the time I returned to school that September, sport had taken on greater meaning. I would re-live sporting contests in my mind in the classroom, while walking down the street, while eating dinner, and pretty much at most points during the day. My love of sport required no dependency on other people, except of course my father, who controlled the television. There were no restrictions on my imagination. And television was never boring because there was always another major sporting event around the corner.

In the lead up to the Minter–Hagler fight, Minter had reportedly said: ‘It has taken me 17 years to become champion of the world. I’m not going to let a black man take it away from me.’ Minter later claimed that he ‘didn’t mean it the way it might sound’.³ If it had been a ploy to sell more tickets or gain more support, it was ill advised.

The rivalry between the two fighters allegedly began in Las Vegas when Hagler refused to shake Minter’s hand. Minter’s stablemate Kevin Finnegan, a former Hagler victim, added fuel to the fire by claiming that Hagler once told him, ‘I don’t touch white flesh.’⁴ These were unsubstantiated claims from a man who had admitted to hating Hagler. Hagler had previously said, ‘I make a point of never shaking hands with future opponents.’⁵ He preferred to shake hands with his rivals after they had fought.

Minter’s reported racial comment set the tone for the contest. By also wearing Union Jack underpants at the weigh-in for the fight and then entering the ring with an oversized Union Jack and St George banner, Minter did little to subdue the jingoistic atmosphere that had built up at a time when England had been bursting with racial tension.

England’s economic depression made race relations sink to one of its lowest points. By 1980, England had entered recession and unemployment topped two million. The blame for the country’s lack of jobs quickly turned to immigrant populations, fuelled further by Thatcher’s Tory government and the mainstream press. Demonising blacks and immigrants of colour sold papers, won votes. How perverse. The National Front and their supporters needed no excuse to instigate random acts of violence against blacks and Asians; the people they blamed for just about every problem in society.

Minter’s words and actions came across as anti-black, not patriotic. By fight night, the contest was not just the United States versus the United Kingdom. It was black versus white.

With the anthems out of the way, the MC took centre stage. He announced that the fight would be for the ‘undisputed middleweight title of the world’ as if presenting the next act at a circus. The MC then introduced Minter, who wore dark red shorts with a thick white trim. Before the announcer could finish his name, the crowd let out a lusty cheer as Minter, hands held aloft, drifted to the centre of the ring to acknowledge them.

‘And from Brockton in the United States, the challenger …’ The crowd dampened the atmosphere with boos before the MC could announce Hagler’s name. Hagler, bobbing up and down and with his head bowed, half-heartedly pumped his left fist in the air, but it was unclear whom he was acknowledging.

Minter towered over Hagler as they met face to face in the middle of the ring for the referee’s instructions. Some fighters look away, shaking their nerves loose by moving from side to side. Others will stare at their opponent and try to intimidate them. Minter and Hagler barely moved as they gazed at each other in the misty arena. They looked as if they were each about to avenge a friend’s murder.

Once the bell rang, Minter came out aggressively, hoping to impose his will, but Hagler kept catching him with leaping right hooks. Every time Hagler caught him with a punch, Minter looked distressed. It was like he couldn’t see the punches coming. Within a minute, Hagler opened a cut under the champion’s left eye. This had been common for Minter. Most of his six previous losses had been due to severe facial cuts. Undeterred, the Brit pressed forward, although Hagler’s jerky movements and compact stance appeared to confuse him. Minter offered little movement. His head stuck out like a pelican’s. Every time they exchanged, Minter appeared to throw more punches but Hagler landed the more damaging blows. Minter was bigger and quicker, but his punches were more like slaps than real decisive hits.

The two traded blows as if in a street fight. There was no rhythm to it, just malice and anger. They’d throw scrappy punches in close, take a breather, and then go tearing into each other again. By round two, Hagler’s slashing overhand lefts and uppercuts were hurting Minter. The American’s shot selection was mesmerising. Hagler could slug or box. He could fight on the back foot or come forward, or from an orthodox (leading with his left hand) or southpaw (leading with his right hand) stance. Hagler’s ability to adapt in a fight was also legendary, so it was unsurprising that he became the aggressor to neutralise Minter’s attacks. The challenger had been winning the brawl, making the champion look amateurish, when Minter caught Hagler with a clubbing right hook. The punch stopped the American from advancing forward and momentarily buckled his knees. Minter had finally derailed Hagler’s charge and he moved in for the kill.

This appeared to be the turning point of the fight, the defining moment when the contest would be won or lost. Would Minter finish the job? How would Hagler react? I thought Minter was about to knock Hagler out. But Marvellous Marvin was a bitter and determined man. He’d waited years to get a world title. If the hostility of the crowd could not deter him, nothing Minter could throw at him would push him back. As that right hook landed, Hagler probably had flashbacks to his early days fighting in grimy Philadelphian gyms, picking up little or no money. I’m sure he didn’t want to go back to those days. So Hagler came right back at Minter. The American stole the initiative away from the Brit, who was now bleeding from the nose and had a mark under his right eye.

According to Harry Carpenter, commentating for the BBC, Hagler had said before the contest that the title was rightfully his. In round three, he became the stalker, throwing double jabs with his snaking arms, moving around, always changing angles, never allowing Minter to relax or ease his way into the fight. Minter could not set his feet, which would allow him to generate enough power into his punches to push Hagler back. Every time Minter planted himself, Hagler would either hit him or move out of punching range. Minter’s hands were quick, but his feet and reactions were slow.

The crowd, undeterred, chanted ‘Miiiin-tuh, Miiiin-tuh, Miiiin-tuh!’ But Minter’s face was a bloody mess. He now had a cut over his left eye. I wondered how he could see Hagler through all the blood. Midway through the round, Hagler bludgeoned Minter with a right hook; the Brit grabbed his face with his gloves as if his nose, lips, eyes and cheekbones were about to collapse. I didn’t know whether he was trying to stop his gum shield from flying out or his face from crumbling onto the canvas.

When you see fighters in pain or hurt while watching a contest on television, you’re detached. You cannot smell the metallic fragrance of blood. You cannot hear the abused squeals of grown men in pain. You cannot see the saliva flying from the mouths of the fighters after absorbing a punch. You cannot hear the trainers shouting instructions or the audience urging their man to win. You cannot see the fighters’ distorted expressions or the way their eyes roll aimlessly like a metal ball in a pinball machine. But after that shot, I could feel Minter’s pain.

Soon after, the referee called timeout. He tugged a reluctant Minter to his corner for the ringside doctor to inspect the facial damage. Minter’s face looked like someone had slashed him above and below each eye with a knife. The crowd’s mood changed. Chants turned to grunts. Minter’s father-in-law and trainer Doug Bidwell had seen enough. Bidwell stopped the fight. Minter lodged his arms on the ropes in frustration. Hagler sank to his knees in the middle of the ring as if in prayer. The title was finally his.

Then a beer can whistled towards Hagler’s head. Before Hagler could get to his feet, another object flew over his bald dome, then another missile and another. Soon bottles and cans rained. The new champ curled into the canvas like a scared child at a fireworks display. The police jumped into the ring to apprehend a man who tried to attack Hagler.

I couldn’t believe how quickly the crowd had soured. Nor could I tear my eyes away from the screen. Hagler’s corner men Goody and Pat Petronelli came into the ring to protect him. They formed a human pyramid over the fighter as the crowd gathered ringside to shout racist abuse. Most of the press sitting ringside sheltered under tables or held chairs above their heads to avoid being hit by the alcoholic missiles. Objects struck Carpenter and ITV’s Reg Gutteridge, British boxing’s foremost commentators. These fans, it appeared, had not thrown empty cans and bottles. They had thrown half-full weapons in disgust and hatred.

I did not see Hagler again that night, maybe a knee on canvas or the shining glint of his beer-stained bald head. But his corner men, some officials in suits and the police scraped him through the bottom rope. ‘He had to be smuggled away like a criminal from the scene of his triumph,’ said the Daily Mirror’s Frank McGhee. They dragged him through the hostile crowd to his changing room as remnants of blood and beer sizzled in the ring.

‘Disgusting!’ was the headline on the front cover of the 3 October issue of Boxing News. Mullan opened his report by stating: ‘The long-dead myth of British sportsmanship was finally buried at Wembley as a cascade of beer bottles and cans showered the ring and a racist mob howled obscenities at the black fighter who had taken Alan Minter’s world middleweight title and at the black referee who had stopped the fight after one minute 45 seconds of the third round.’

In the same edition of Boxing News, American promoter Bob Arum, who staged the Minter–Hagler fight, had stronger words. ‘This was a disgrace … It was ridiculous the way this nationalism was built up before the fight.’

Once Minter had drawn the colour line, the fight had taken on a sinister tone. Black had beaten white. Black had beaten up white. Embarrassed white. England’s ego had been bruised. And they couldn’t accept it. My father was happy for Hagler, but the racial conflict had disturbed him into silence. England had lost more than just a boxing contest.

Until the first beer can flashed past Hagler’s head, I had not completely inherited my father’s support for the American. I couldn’t grasp how Hagler’s skin colour could be the cause of such fury. And sport seemed like such an inappropriate platform for such clashes. Didn’t seem real. But then this was the first time I’d ever witnessed racially motivated violence.

Fright.

The fight sullied my impression of sport. Couldn’t quite re-live sport in my mind anymore. Couldn’t quite use sport to alleviate the boredom of school anymore. Couldn’t quite hide as freely behind my daydreams anymore.

Distrust. Fright.

A year after the fight, my sisters were talking about a fight at Little Ilford where a white girl had called a black girl a ‘black bitch’. When I heard this, I laughed. Paula, my eldest sister, turned to me and snapped, ‘Why are you laughing?’ I didn’t know. I probably thought the word ‘bitch’ was naughty. ‘Don’t you understand?’ Paula said, before explaining that the term was a racist insult. I didn’t understand and walked off in a sulk.

The Minter–Hagler fight flashed back into my head a few months later, when my television screen was on fire. That was all I could see, flames bursting through our 19-inch canvas. I had been lying passively on the floor, waiting for the blaze to engulf me. However, my television was not about to burn down. My house was in no immediate danger. I just couldn’t digest the images on the news. I felt troubled and anxious as I watched scenes from the 1981 Brixton uprising.

The ‘riots’ had been sparked by ‘Swamp 81’, a police operation launched in Brixton that allowed officers to stop and question anyone they thought looked suspicious of committing a street crime. The police stopped 943 people (over half were black) of which 118 were arrested in four days.⁶ ‘Swamp 81’ had followed years of over-policing in black communities and over-policing at any events or venues frequented primarily by black people. This had followed years of mainstream press linking crime to black people as if an inherent character trait. This had followed Thatcher’s warning that British people feared being ‘swamped’ by people from different cultures. This had followed the New Cross Fire in January 1981, when 13 black partygoers aged between 14 and 22 lost their lives. There was little or no mainstream press. No outcry, no mourning outside of the black and local communities. Despite New Cross being a hub for the National Front, police investigations had been swift, too swift, to rule the incident as an accident. To the wider public, the victims had no names, the incident went unnoticed. This led to the ‘Black People’s Day of Action’, a ‘general strike of blacks’ where 20,000 people marched from Fordham Park in New Cross to Hyde Park on 2 March. The march had been largely peaceful. Despite this, the Sun’s headline read: ‘Day the blacks ran riot in London.’

The New Cross Fire had been vague but haunting to me. I knew of it, but without detail. ‘Thirteen Dead and Nothing Said.’ The Brixton ‘riots’ had been more vivid. But my mind could not absorb the extreme violence and rioting taking place in my city. I was only eight and didn’t know much about anything. All I knew was that I had never seen the night distorted so alarmingly as I watched the images on the news of overturned vehicles set alight, and blackened and shelled buildings. There were hundreds of police cowering under riot shields, pelted with Molotov cocktails and bricks, distressed black people dragged by coppers in riot gear, a pub with an erupting roof, incessant sirens, rushing crowds and confusion.

The morning after the uprising, the streets were dusty and empty, as though desperate for sleep. The skeletons of cars threw mournful shadows. Shops and houses were doorless, windowless and war torn. Brixton looked haunted and exhausted.

On the final day of the ‘riots’, I was having a late afternoon bath when my mother entered the bathroom. I stepped out of the bath while the washing machine, which was in our bathroom, was convulsing. My mother helped me dry myself. As I stood there, damp and naked, I said, ‘Mum, I want to bleach my skin white.’

‘Why?’ my mother replied calmly, although startled by my confession. ‘People don’t like us,’ I replied. I was too scared to say white people through fear they might be listening. She replied, ‘Listen, your skin is beautiful, dark and smooth. You must always be proud of your skin and who you are.’

I listened. I took note. But I was entering a phase when racism would become part of my daily reality.

For some time after the Brixton ‘riots’, I could not sleep. Paranoid, I would listen for sirens. Couldn’t hear much. But the slightest sound would make me shiver as if someone had been breaking into our house. Walking to school, I inspected nearby shops, trying to detect any visible signs of damage. My eyes flickered constantly as if someone had been waving a sword an inch from my face. My skin terrified me. Everyday experiences of racism, the period when rumour turned to reality, made me even more cagey, even more withdrawn, never quite knowing where I stood, never quite knowing how people perceived me. What did white folks really think of me? Didn’t know. But my skin tone made me feel apologetic, guilty, watched, scrutinised, as if a constant Spotlight had been covering my every move.