WHITE RIOT

UK, 2019, 80 minutes, Colour/Black and white.

Red Saunders, Roger Huddle, Kate Webb.

Directed by Rubika Shah.

The title comes from the song by The Clash. The Clash feature in this documentary about racism in the UK, especially in London, in the 1970s.

The film was made in 2019, 40 years after the key events that it portrays. And, it has the advantage of the organiser of the movement and the concert, Rock against Racism, red Saunders. He is interviewed extensively throughout the film, memories of the time, assessment after 40 years. There was a lot of publishing, posters, design, and to members of the staff, Roger Huddle and Kate Webb are also interviewed extensively as are quite a number of other people involved in the Rock against Racism.

It is something of a surprise, at the beginning of the film, for many audiences to hear that Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart and David Bowie had been supportive of racist MP, Enoch Powell (with clips of him and his speeches and interviews). Other musicians, especially The Clash and its members, very strong in the movement as a developed in the mid-70s.

One of the occasions for this uprising was the dramatic development of the National Front and its racist philosophies, especially the deportation of all coloured people from the UK. This documentary includes many sequences of their rallies, especially their leader, somewhat innocent -looking and ordinary but fiercely racist in his declarations and urging people to demonstrate and protest.

On the other hand, there are a lot of young people who are against racism, also gathering, protesting, and the visualising of a huge march in London. And, there is the concert itself, rain, makeshift stage, hopes for 100,000 people attending at Victoria Park filled with enthusiastic people joining with the musicians, especially Tom Robinson, and emotional protest in song against racism.

There is a statement at the end of the film that the National Front was defeated in the elections of 1979.

However, the film is from 2019, only four years after the vote for Britain to exit the European Union. And, in the meantime, more National Front movement of propaganda, especially through Nigel Farrage. And, in years following the release of the film, Farrage himself was elected to Parliament, and with dissatisfaction for the governing Tories and then with the Labour succession, movements again towards racial discrimination, encouraged by the policies of Donald Trump in his second term as US president.