Brixton Riots, 1981

From April 10 to 12, 1981, about 1,000 Londoners, mainly black youth, fought the police in the Brixton Uprising. The Brixton Riots brought violence to Britain's capital on a level unseen for a century, and saw the first use of petrol bombs against the British state on the streets of Britain. They were the most explosive events in an arc of black‐led but multiracial riots in anger at unemployment, poor housing, and institutional police and state racism that had begun in Bristol in 1980, and would soon spread to engulf Liverpool and other towns and cities of Britain.