30 years from Brixton

"People aren't that optimistic" - I speak to Cyrus Shahrad aka DJ Hiatus 

Published: Friday, April 8, 2011

How should we feel on the 30th anniversary of the Brixton riots?

Cyrus Shahrad doesn’t know the answer. A long-time resident of the area, Cyrus – aka DJ Hiatus – is a journalist and musician whose preoccupation for the last weeks and months has been disseminating Brixton’s riots with eyes on its uncertain future.

The chiselled 32 year old Iranian joins me in central London, heavy eyes a window to lonesome 12 hour days in a studio and typing up the latest addition to his Brixton portfolio: a piece on the riots for The Guardian.


“As a journalist I was aiming to draw attention to how good things are; how much things had improved in Brixton. It surprised me to find out people aren’t all that happy and people aren’t that optimistic.”

His new track Insurrection joins that sentiment. An uncomfortable urban poem – written and performed by Brixton elegist Linton Kwesi Johnson – dominates a haunting synth loop and is set against a video constructed from shaky April 1981 footage.

Using loops, samples, and street recitativ over the dated VT should forge distance between the then and now; a modern perspective and ‘never again’ sentiment. But as Cyrus has found, the one thing we can’t feel 30 years from Brixton is complacent.

In 1981, over 50 percent unemployment forced the predominantly black community into the economy of desperation. Sure crime, drugs and violence were prevalent – but such is life in a ghetto. Overbearing police officers aggravated – as did their unflinching reluctance to help.

The pot was simmering well before April 10, when (by Brixton standards) a pedestrian stabbing incident attracted crowds and police. A flash mob rose; it gathered momentum, and Britain’s most notorious race-based riot ensued for the weekend.

Cars were torched, buildings looted and incinerated. Ultimately, 5,000 residents clashed with 3,000 police drafted in from all across the capital as injuries and hospitalisations in their hundreds forced coverage on print and screen. The country was finally forced to sit up and take notice, to comprehend the meaning of Brixton.


But Cyrus reports that some of these contributing ingredients – alienation, oppression, deprivation et al – have been left untreated, going even more stale with time. The rankest is the still-strained relationship the community has with the police.

Broadcast history from three days of violence mostly records police cowering behind riot shields and hauling colleagues through the gauntlet to find safety.

But the Scarman report drafted in the aftermath laid much blame on police discrimination of black youths and heavy use of controversial SuS (stop and search based on ‘suspicion’ alone) activity. Long before the Molotov cocktails rained on their heads, the police had a blatant act of prejudice legitimised.

That this animosity still exists should be surprising given the community policing initiatives conceived following the riots, but recent incidents, reports Cyrus, have locals crying foul.

Case in point is the recent death of 1980s reggae singer Smiley Culture who died during a drug raid on his home just under a month ago.

“In the raid Smiley wound up dead, having supposedly stabbed himself in the chest with a kitchen knife…
… “It sounds ridiculous! I mean it’s quite possibly true, but right now in Brixton – even though he died in Surrey – there’s this massive outpouring of anti-police sentiment.”

Before the first rock was thrown in 1981, 13 black youths met their end in a suspicious fire in nearby New Cross. Police refused to investigate it and citizens and activists vocally demanded justice for those 13 young lives that never came.

“There are campaigns ongoing and local activism to have Smiley’s death explained. This stuff is still happening and there’s a great divide.

“In Lambeth town hall they had a meeting and the police tried to put their side of the story across but got shouted down by the hundreds of people there. They were queuing outside the door – you couldn’t get them all in.”


As a half Iranian, young professional living in the area, Cyrus isn’t the natural choice to be musing on a race riot born of the frustration, alienation and deprivation of the black community. Unless his development was quicker than most – which wouldn’t be surprising – he couldn’t talk when the fires of Brixton were extinguished.

“For whatever reason that never occurred to me”, he says.

He cites his music video for Hiatus track Save Yourself which is centred around the Iranian revolution. It features similar footage as his Brixton effort: disaffected residents rising up and throwing dissent, punches, and Molotov cocktails at their oppressors.

“I basically made the same video for the two. There may be a kind of subconscious connection that I just identify with.

“In some ways I was a child of the Iranian revolution – I lived there until we had to leave because of the revolution. I remember in the vaguest ways parts of Iran falling apart and possibly identify with that from a personal point of view.”

For Cyrus, the salient struggle facing Brixton veterans isn’t any looming revolution, but the area’s evolution; arguably a tougher foe to face.

The ghettoisation of the community was one facet of the struggle 30 years ago, but it’s the gentrification of these streets that concerns Brixtonians today.

Looking through pictures of old Brixton, the architecture and construction was sharp and high-end for its time. The same buildings today are architecturally striking but in a dilapidated state. Ripe real estate for landlords.
“Brixton’s not a rags to riches story. Brixton was quite an affluent town” says the ten-year resident.

“It’s like a suburb of Chelsea – you’ve got gorgeous green spaces, massive parks, you’ve got the Lido – it used to be a really wealthy place and it’s just suffered a downturn of fortune over the last century that now its reclaiming.”

For a lot of people that’s progress. Socio-economic attrition equals progress and the betterment of an area that’s suffered its troubles. But having fought, literally and brutally, for a town that is now the embodiment of multiculturalism – they even have their own currency – it’s worth pondering the right the world has to move post-modernism into Brixton.

Cyrus acknowledges the conflict inherent in being a professional 30-something champion of Brixton, deflecting the developers who look to sanitise the place to suit people like him.

“They opened a Starbucks on the high street and there’s a general ‘there goes the neighbourhood’ sentiment.
“But it’s hard when a part of you says: ‘Awesome, we’ve arrived!’ It feels like you’ve been amalgamated into the mainstream, you’re watching your town get dragged out of the dirt.”

It’s an intriguing conflict which unfortunately enforces the sense that Brixton natives find their voice stifled to this day. Their vocal arsenal, which has improved endlessly with local champions like Hiatus guest vocalist Linton Kwesi Johnson, is still no match for progress.

“The community fought for the streets, they earned their right to leave their mark and what’s most upsetting about it all is how well Brixton works. Everyone talks about the failures of multiculturalism but Brixton as a multicultural society is incredibly harmonious; it works really well.

“That maybe justifies a degree of caution in moving people in and us turning a blind eye.”


Its a difficult one to pitch – how should we feel on the 30th anniversary of the Brixton riots?

Happy (enough) that despite some puncture wounds, the area’s post-riot inflation has allowed multiculturalism to thrive. Nervous that Brixton’s past may soon be buried beneath delis and pizzarias, masking the civil war that happened on these streets. Sad that relations with the police are still rife with tension and mistrust.

And ultimately confused that preserving the status quo and illuminating Brixton’s transition takes the voice of an agent from an outsider: a demographic enemy, using the riots as currency, helping stave the social insurrection.