Chapter 9 From Brixton to Bradford: of®cial discourse on race and urban violence in the United Kingdom John Lea Recourse to riot by those dispossessed of any other means of representing their interests or simply defending themselves from attack and harassment has a long history (Hobsbawm 1959). What is perhaps more remarkable is its survival into the mature liberal democracies of advanced capitalism. In the United States since the Second World War the riots in Los Angeles (1965), Detroit and many other cities (1967), in Los Angeles following the police beating of Rodney King together with numerous lesser disturbances have all been theatres in which the grievances of the poor and socially excluded have been played out. In the United Kingdom, which is the focus of this chapter, during the same period numerous disturbances, though small by comparison with the American examples, have concentrated the minds of political and policy- making elites. 1958 saw the first postwar disturbances in the Notting Hill area of London. During the 1980s there were significant disturbances in Bristol (1980), London, Bradford and Liverpool (1981), and in Birming- ham and other Midland towns (1985). The 1990s saw outbreaks in the North East, Oxford and Bristol (1991±2), and Bradford (1995). The beginning of the present century was greeted with further outbreaks of rioting in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham (2001) A notable feature of all the incidents mentioned here, on both sides of the Atlantic, has been their connection with race and ethnicity. While by no means all participants in the riots have been ethnic minorities, racism and the various injustices of discrimination, blocked opportunity and police harassment which continue to be visited upon non-white 183